Technology transfer survey reveals disparities but growth at US universities

An AUTM survey shows that US technology transfer is thriving, but many small universities are having trouble commercializing their research.

Academic technology transfer is thriving in the field of biotechnology, according to the "AUTM Licensing Survey: FY 2001", the latest overview of the field by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM; Northbrook, IL, USA) released on May 16¹. Schools with long-standing, well-funded technology transfer offices (TTOs) are striking the most licensing deals with industry, but other universities are also investing in technology transfer. Even so, small universities still face many hurdles to becoming as successful as the major players.

US universities apply for more patents, receive more royalties and start up more biotechnology firms with each passing year. Over the past ten years, $200 billion in public research funding gave rise to approximately 100,000 invention disclosures that eventually resulted in about 50,000 patents and 25,000 licenses, says Patricia Harsche, president of AUTM.

About 80% of all licensing deals stem from the biomedical field, and the majority of patents and deals consistently fall into the hands of universities with the wealthiest TTOs. The University of California system (Oakland, CA, USA), for example, encompasses ten campuses that have dwarfed other universities in terms of research funding, patents² and licenses since the late eighties (see Table 1). In 2001 alone, UC applied for 852 patents and secured 868 license agreements, according to the AUTM survey.

Table 1 Patents granted, patent applications filed, and disclosed licensing deals for US universities ranked by federal funding received

Universities with the most research funding, however, do not necessarily convert it into commercial licenses. According to figures from the National Science Foundation (NSF; Arlington, VA, USA), Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, USA) received about $500,000 from all federal funding agencies for life sciences research between 1998 and 2001, whereas the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA, USA) received less than half that amount (~$200,000) over the same period³. Between 1998 and 2002, however, MIT disclosed 13 technology transfer deals with biotechnology firms, whereas Cornell disclosed none, according to Recombinant Capital (Walnut Creek, CA, USA), a biotech consultant firm that collects data on licensing agreements.

Funding alone does not guarantee a university's success at technology transfer, but rather a combination of factors are at play, says Anatole Krattiger, an adjunct professor who teaches intellectual property management in life sciences at Cornell. He says that whether a TTO manages to convert academic research into a marketable product depends on whether the type of research done at the university is applied rather than fundamental, how much money is available for each technology transfer operation, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the researchers and the programs offered at the school. MIT, for example, which strikes about 100 new technology transfer deals each year, is traditionally known for its entrepreneurial atmosphere, whereas Cornell is typically more conservative in its research philosophy, says Krattiger. In addition, Krattiger says the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which allows universities to issue licenses on patents generated from federally funded projects, could be amended to specifically increase the participation of smaller institutions in the technology transfer arena.

Harsche says that more small universities are fostering research with valuable social applications, hiring technology transfer officers and striking licensing deals with industry. But a common problem for many smaller universities is the need to access a large number of patents before commercializing an invented technology. The developers of golden rice, for example, would need to license over 70 patents from 32 affiliations to distribute the product on a global scale—an expensive proposition. Large universities with established TTOs usually develop sophisticated patent portfolios to get around this problem, which is one reason why the UC system is so successful: the ten universities can pool their intellectual property to shorten the time needed to develop a finished product. Smaller universities, which have historically focused on generating their own income, have only recently begun such pooling efforts with each other, says Irene Abrams, a biotechnology licensing officer at MIT.

The Science and Technology Ventures (STV) at Columbia University (New York, NY, USA) is one of a growing number of endeavors to pool intellectual property among universities. STV aims to speed the discovery process by partnering with other academic institutions that invest in similar research or by "bundling intellectual property to make a much more valuable package," says Tom Crosell, an attorney and senior associate director of STV. So far, STV has built alliances with McGill University (Montreal, QC, Canada) and Ben-Gurion University (Beer-Sheva, Israel), among others.

Technology transfer at small universities is certainly more successful than in the past, says Harsche: "We see more and more small schools wanting to get involved every day." If the smaller universities can obtain more funding for their TTOs, proactively pool intellectual property with other universities and focus on applied technologies, then they should also expect to thrive in commercializing their research.