Category: Licensing

Living in an imperfective world and contributing to it

Though many economists may describe how perfect markets are the cornerstone of a healthy economy, most of the wealth creation is happening around market imperfections. You can make  money in engaging into activities aimed at suppressing any imperfections in the markets(for example taking advantage of inconsistencies or deviations of traded items – an activity called arbitrage that generated a recent drive at getting information a few microseconds earlier by locating computers as close as possible to the exchange floor).

Another way to benefit from market imperfections consists in generating them, for example through patents. Patents provide a quasi monopoly to their holders to commercialize their invention.

Should we avoid contributing to such market imperfections and stop providing exclusive patented rights to firms ?  Clearly not since often such incentive maybe required to allow the necessary investment be made to reach market. However sometimes another route consists in non-exclusively licensing out technologies to spur competition among firms willing to develop and bring the invention to market.  Since it requires more work to be done effectively, one tends to overlook such opportunities.

Reaching out to(more) perfection may be something worth pursuing outside of theological endeavours.

Are patent auctions an opportunity to consider for Universities ?

Earlier this month, NASA annouced the successfull first bidding of a portfolio of 10 US patents in an auction helo by the US company Ocean Tomo. The proceed of 50’000 dollars will go back to NASA (see here for more information). Nothing new since the company organizing the auction has been operating for three years in this field. What is however attracting the attention is that for the first time a government agency  used this opportunity to sell some of its patents.

The question is now: are Universities next on the list ?

On one hand, that could provide a approach complementary to other channels of commercialization worth considering. On the other hand selling IP rights to unkown buyers may raise a serie of questions when this is done by a public research institution.

Does a University has a responsability in defining the type of partners it sells its technology to ? Beyond respecting the export regulation (probably something Ocean Tomo is keen to respect), should it go further ? Probably yes and so the relevance of auction tools to University owned IP may be limited to well defined cases. Recent efforts in setting guidelines for University ‘s licensing such as the “nine points to consider when licencing University technology” points toward more involvment of University when licensing , not less. Will patent auctions reverse this trend ? probably not.

When the time will come…

I recently was participating at the Western AUTM regional meeting in Hawaï (I was the only European actually). During the meeting I attented a presentation given by a young executive in a private company explaining how we, TTOs, should interact with them. Nothing new there with the usual stress on how we should present our technologies to them, what kind of question they need to see answered and the fact they are very busy and we should not expect always a feedback on their side.

In a way I wonder if this approach has now become slowly outdated in the open innovation economy. The idea of a buyer’s market where we (TTOs) should fight to get the company’s attention to market our technologies is maybe evolving towards a seller’s market where companies will feel more and more the need to come to the TTOs in order to make sure they maintain a lead on the innovation pack. I am pretty sure this time will come but the question is when. I feel this is close and probably the companies that have identified and acted upon this change will take the lead in the upcoming innovation marketplace.