Comstock's magazine 1217 - December 2017 | Page 48

n INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
going to just agree to something without wanting to nego-
tiate it,” says Pathak, who spent his career launching and
running startups before coming to UC Davis.
That’s why he says UC Davis isn’t pursuing anything
similar to UCSD’s initiative, though he did cut the length
of UC Davis’ licensing agreement from 25 pages to 12. At
Stanford, Ku says her team also offers no expedited license
The Changing Face of
UC Tech Transfer
T
he composition of a tech-transfer office matters.
Teams stocked with former business people —
instead of lawyers — are typically less interested
in locking up intellectual property, says Andrew Nel-
son, a University of Oregon associate professor of
management who studies tech-transfer programs.
“To broadly categorize, among tech licensing of-
fices, there seem to be those that are worried most
about enforcing rules and protecting the university’s
interests versus those that really see themselves as
service shops,” he says.
That could mean change is underway in the UC
Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Christine
Gulbranson was apppointed senior vice president
of the office last May. She is a scientist, engineer
and CEO of Christalis, a strategic advisory firm for
high-tech clients, and previously was a partner at a
venture capital firm.
Wendy Lim, her chief of staff who started in Au-
gust, came from Yelp, where she was vice president
of strategic finance. Victoria Slivkoff, the head of
strategic partnerships, joined in July. Her previous
work includes product and market research, digital
marketing, and logistics and supply chain-manage-
ment for sports, health and beauty products.
option. “We actually don’t believe in that because not ev-
ery [IP] technology fits into a company in the same way,”
she says. “To set a price on anything [such as a standard
equity level under an expedited licensing scheme] is sort
of odd.”
Kenney and others make up a third, more radical
wing that would turn IP ownership over to the employee-
entrepreneurs who discover it. Making them owners, Kenney
argues, would move more ideas to market because univer-
sities often decline to pursue a patent on IP that they think
won’t yield a profitable license. He says an inventor who owns
rights to their IP understands its potential and is more likely
to find a way to pay for a patent to see the idea brought to
market. And if the inventor launches a profitable company
without going through a tough negotiation with the univer-
sity, they’re more likely to become a generous donor down
the road, Kenney says.
He sees Canada’s University of Waterloo as an example
of what that change could achieve. The school assigns IP
ownership to the inventor, and a 2015 Globe and Mail ar-
ticle called it one of the “key breeding grounds” for tech
startups, with more than a hundred university spinoffs op-
erating in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
Hargadon suggests a two-tiered approach for navigat-
ing the available options. A relative handful of UC patents
in just two areas — biotechnology and plant genetics —
generate the bulk of UC system-wide royalties each year.
If campuses engaged in tough negotiations for licenses in
biotech and plants, “what would we be losing if we didn’t
do so in engineering?” he wonders. “Are we unnecessarily
restricting patents in areas that wouldn’t be as valuable? If
that’s stopping anything from getting out, is it worth it?”
he asks.
The discussion will go on, and the proof will be in the re-
sults. A report last April by the Santa Monica-based Milken
Institute ranked 230 public and private research universi-
ties’ tech-transfer performance on number of patents and
licenses issued, amount of licensing income, and number
of startups formed, taking into account each school’s re-
search budget. Stanford, UCSD, and UC Davis all ranked
in the top 50: Stanford was 5th, UCSD 20th, and UC Davis
41st. Stay tuned. n
Steven Yoder writes about business, real estate and criminal
justice. His work has appeared in The Fiscal Times,
Salon, The American Prospect and elsewhere. On Twitter
@syodertweet and at stevenyoder.net.
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comstocksmag.com | December 2017