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.