Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Larry Bock on October 4, 2008 at 2:44pm

Not to stand in the way. I say that a bit sarcastically. I believe Technology Licensing offices should take more of a shot gun approach to licensing then spend months negotiating a single license.

Permalink Reply by Maureen Hoatlin on October 16, 2008 at 2:11pm

Not standing in the way would be ideal and would seem to benefit everybody.
I thought it might be useful for others to outline our ongoing investigation into supporting a project to get to the next step in the market. One option is getting STTR/SBIR funding. Let's say we create a partnership with a company and get an STTR award of $100K for one year, and let's say 30% goes to the partner company, 70% could come to our lab. But then 54% of the $70,000 goes to our University as indirect costs, leaving us with only $32,000 to do the project. Not much can be done with 30K.

Permalink Reply by Maureen Hoatlin on October 16, 2008 at 2:12pm

Larry Bock said:

Not to stand in the way. I say that a bit sarcastically. I believe Technology Licensing offices should take more of a shot gun approach to licensing then spend months negotiating a single license.

Not standing in the way would be ideal and would seem to benefit everybody.

Permalink Reply by Joel B. Kirschbaum on December 3, 2008 at 8:12am

Under the state labor codes, technologies invented by academic faculty are not the personal property of the inventors but are the property of the university. The university has an obligation to manage these assets for public use and benefit and does so through its tech. transfer office. Not all university tech. transfer offices operate in the same way. In fact, academic tech. transfer is largely driven by the personality and world view of the office's director. Some, for example, require their people to haggle endlessly in search of negotiating a deal that is perfect from the university's perspective and maximizes the financial return. Sometimes, the director is not entirely to blame because that person may be forced into this position by the university's leadership. In any event, no technology can be licensed and no start-up formed without the participation and cooperation of the tech. transfer office. As UCSF's tech. transfer office director, my philosophy is that there is no such thing as a perfect deal and trying to negotiate one is an exercise in futility and rapidly diminishing returns. I instruct our licensing staff just to do deals that are "good enough", which means being reasonable, getting the deal done quickly, and leaving money on the table. Deal flow is king and haggling over every issue no matter how minor just to score negotiating points guarantees poor deal flow. By getting the deal done quickly we strive to do a volume business and by being reasonable in our deal terms we inevitably will leave money on the table that we more than make up through volume and the repeat business we win from a licensee that has found our licensing process to be a positive experience.