Fighting tech transfer - and winning

Read the full article by Ed Silverman in The Scientist (Volume 21 | Issue 1 | Page 43).

"'The tech transfer office saw inventions as a way to augment the shrinking university budget and [was] overly aggressive in trying to make money,' says (Chris) Johnson. 'For us, the better research opportunity was to make it open-source, but they didn't want to do that. It was all very frustrating. My philosophy was that, yes, I could make money, but I wanted to do it in a way that benefited more than just me, but also my research and my lab, and allow the software to get into real-world situations. Money wasn't the primary motivation. The whole process was so onerous. Since then, in the last year or so, the tech transfer office has been completely reformulated. Thankfully.'"

Read the "article extra": "THE TROUBLE WITH TECH TRANSFER" by Ed Silverman.

The hardball approach (taken by greedy U.S. university tech transfer offices), however, may be prompting more companies to consider trolling for inventions (or investing in university research?) overseas, simply because some foreign universities are perceived as more willing to agree to industry terms. For instance, a university in Europe or Asia may be willing to assign ownership of the patent to the company sponsoring research, whereas a university in the United States is more likely to offer only an option to negotiate a royalty-bearing license, says Susan Butts, senior director of external science and technology programs at Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich. "There can be an enormous difference," she says, "and there were times where we've walked away from deals." (Parenthetical comments added.)