University Technology Offices Focus Effort On Overcoming Academic 'Cultural' Barriers

The Scientist 9[12]:1, Jun. 12, 1995 News University Technology Offices Focus Effort On Overcoming Academic 'Cultural' Barriers Now that efficient systems are in place for patenting, the matter at hand is surmounting concerns about the process among faculty By Lee Katterman Sidebars Using the Internet for Technology Transfer . . . Royalty-Sharing Formulas* of the Top 10 U.S. Universities . . . In little more than a decade, licensing of university technology has grown from an occasional practice at some schools to an integral and lucrative function at many universities across the United States. However, this trend also heightens the awareness for some faculty and administrators of the "cultural" differences between the academic and commercial worlds. For the proponents of technology transfer, the differences represent obstacles that must be surmounted. For others, there are fears that further efforts to bridge the two cultures may compromise the basic science approach that has thrived at universities for the last several decades. A major barrier separating the academic and commercial worlds- -the stigma attached to "applied" research -- appears to be falling, say many university licensing professionals. That is what Lita Nelson sees happening. Nelson, director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, observes that fewer faculty express the view that involvement in patents and licensing will "contaminate" them in the eyes of their colleagues and research sponsors. "I saw that attitude commonly 10 years ago, but not as much any more," she comments. Scheduling Conflict: Albert Rubenstein notes that faculty operate on a different time scale from the corporate world. Indeed, numerous indicators show that the payoff from university technology transfer is finally becoming substantial. "Disclosures [of faculty inventions] are increasing gradually, new patents are tracking that closely, and income from licensing is going up more rapidly," reports Joyce Brinton, director of the Harvard University Office of Technology Transfer and Trademark Licensing and president of the Norwalk, Conn.-based Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). Now, the Payoff:Harvard's Joyce Brinton reports that tech transfer income has become substantial. "It takes so long for a technology to generate much in the way of royalties that the majority of universities only now have inventions that have had enough time to be producing 'real' money," says Brinton. She points out that while Harvard received $24,000 in royalties in 1980, last year it earned $5.75 million. The top 10 universities or state college systems ranked by royalty revenues received a total of $170 million in FY1993 from 1,400 technologies licensed to industry, according to an AUTM survey. Perhaps equally important, reports Lisa Kuuttila, director of the Office of Technology Commercialization at Iowa State University, is that the number of faculty interested in patenting their ideas is growing. One possible reason is that offices such as Kuuttila's have come a long way toward smoothing the road to technology transfer. Although a number of universities already had experience with patents and licensing, the majority established full-fledged intellectual property and marketing functions after Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act (Public Law 96-517) in 1980. The law gave universities ownership of inventions resulting from federally sponsored research. Now, with 15 years' experience, most schools say they have the mechanics of the process down. Systems are in place to evaluate disclosures for marketability, patent filings are made without undue inconvenience for faculty inventors, rules are in effect alerting researchers of their responsibility to reveal inventions, and formulas used for distributing royalties have been established. Today, more faculty realize that patents can generate research support, boost personal income, and provide a sense of accomplishment when an idea attains some commercial success. "It's their baby," says Kuuttila. "They want to see it succeed." Attitudinal Change Research by Yong Lee, a political scientist at Iowa State University, supports these observations. In a survey of United States faculty ("Technology Transfer and the Research University: Drawing the Boundaries of University-Industry Collaboration," presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last February), Lee found growing enthusiasm for technology- transfer activities as part of academic responsibilities. "According to the data," Lee states, "a large majority of American faculties--more than 70 percent--favor a policy awarding research credits on significant patentable inventions," considering them comparable to refereed publications. The survey respondents included 986 faculty from nine disciplines and 429 departments on 115 campuses. Although no data on this topic exist from the 1980s, Lee attempted to determine whether this view represents a shift in attitude by asking faculty whether their views on the relative value of patents and refereed journal articles have changed in the last 10 years. Today, according to Lee, 70.5 percent of respondents say they view patents and refereed articles as equally valuable, while 58 percent remember feeling that way a decade ago. MIT's Nelson speculates that this attitude shift is due in part to faculty recognition that licensing inventions is one way to "keep federal sponsors happy." She says the inventions report in grant applications is scrutinized more closely than ever as the federal government raises expectations for universities and faculty that grant support will yield economically useful research. "Greed" is another reason more faculty view patents and licensing more favorably, according to Albert Rubenstein, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Science at Northwestern University. Not personal greed, he adds quickly: "Faculty want money to do research. They want summer salary, support for graduate students." License agreements often provide such funding. Rubenstein is studying the relationship between universities and industrial sponsors through a series of interviews with faculty members and their counterparts in industry. The trick in making academic-corporate partnerships work is understanding what industry wants, notes Philip Sobocinski, associate director for university-industry relations at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As federal research dollars become more scarce, universities are looking to industry to fill the gap. "But industry is often looking for a focus or target in the research it supports. They want to be a partner, not just a deep pocket." Rubenstein adds, "What industry wants to talk about are 'deliverables'"--reports or research "products" that answer defined questions of commercial significance. Faculty, he points out, are "not in the habit of delivery on a schedule," which can strain the university-industry relationship. Still another motivation for faculty acceptance of patents as a "normal" academic pursuit is the belief that this is one more way to serve society. "There is a growing appreciation that part of meeting the public-service mission of universities is to move technology into the marketplace," comments Joseph Acanfora, manager of the campus liaison group in the Office of Technology Transfer for the University of California system. "The understanding is growing among faculty that the transfer of technology must occur, that publishing is often not enough." Besides, says MIT's Nelson, she finds that some faculty want to see something "real" happen to their ideas--a desire that publication in journals doesn't fulfill. What's In It For Faculty? But as inventions, patents, and technology licenses assume comparable worth with journal articles, universities are faced with how to place a "value" on technology transfer activities. For now, many universities, when making tenure or promotion decisions, do not count patents as equal to refereed articles in journals, notes Nelson. Some universities explicitly exclude patent and license activity from faculty evaluations, she adds. Others may consider patents and "user-oriented" research in faculty evaluations for tenure and promotion, but the weight given to them can vary in unknown ways, depending on the attitudes of the evaluators. Nelson stresses that universities want to avoid the following scenario: "You don't want to hear that Professor Brown was promoted because he brought in $5 million in royalties to the institution, while Professor Smith, who is considered a better teacher, was denied a promotion. We don't want the less academically accomplished to be rewarded for concentrating on commercialization of a technology at the expense of other academic activity." According to Joseph P. Marino, a University of Michigan chemistry professor and associate dean for research, assigning relative value to patents and academic publications is difficult. "It really comes down to the individual's judgment," he says. "I don't feel there is any sort of standard calibration of these things in the scientific community yet." Marino speculates that few university scientists hold a patent equal to a "really good article published in a major journal." But, he adds, a patent's academic value is probably boosted if there is a clear indication that a company wants to develop it, the same way a frequently cited article may be considered to be of high significance. In his survey, Iowa State's Lee documented concern among some faculty that too close a connection between universities and industry might cause a "corrosive influence on academic science and integrity." One physics professor participating in the survey told Lee that "the pressure for rapid results makes it difficult to apply scientific checks and balances, resulting in 'sloppy science.'" Lee also heard that the urgent need for funding may be affecting faculty attitudes toward technology transfer. "In today's funding climate, one cannot afford to be too picky," replied a chemistry professor. Conflicting Interests Dianne Rahm, a University of South Florida associate professor of government and international affairs who is studying university-industry relationships, finds that faculty with inventions under license to industry sometimes develop stronger loyalties to the company than to their university. For instance, explains Rahm, when a university insists on certain license conditions that a company objects to, faculty "tend to be more sympathetic to the firm's view in these ownership struggles." Rahm predicts that, as more faculty become involved with industry, conflict-of-interest issues will become more troublesome for universities. "The question is, 'Does the university become an industrial research lab?'" she notes. "If that's what happens, we'll see a real structural shift [in universities], and many will argue that it's not a good one." Universities and the federal government are attempting to head off such problems, notes MIT's Nelson. "The sophisticated universities make the [conflict-of-interest] rules clear enough that faculty know what's expected of them," she says. In addition, federal agencies are beginning to require that universities put such rules in place. The University of Florida is addressing the culture gap separating the university and industry by establishing an Office of Technology Transfer Education. The office's director, Susan Ray, says her operation will train faculty, staff, and students in how to establish partnerships with industry and how to think about "long-term product endpoints" for their basic research projects. "As universities do long- term research, we can have an eye on the product goals of corporations," says Ray. For all of the growth in technology-transfer activity by universities, "only an occasional faculty member is very savvy about licensing and commercialization of technology," says Jerry Weisbach, a biotechnology consultant and former executive in the pharmaceutical industry. "Most don't have the faintest idea of what's involved." Yet he expects interest in commercialization to continue to rise because the potential payoff is so great. Weisbach worked on a deal involving Rockefeller University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., to license the recently discovered obesity gene. He points out that the faculty inventors will split about $7 million right away and another $23 million if the gene leads to a commercial product, not including any royalties generated. Weisbach speculates: "This deal is going to make a lot more faculty interested in asking, 'What do I have to offer for licensing?'" Lee Katterman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor, Mich.

University Technology Offices Focus Effort On Overcoming Academic 'Cultural' Barriers

University Technology Offices Focus Effort On Overcoming Academic 'Cultural' Barriers

Now that efficient systems are in place for patenting, the matter at hand is surmounting concerns about the process among faculty

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