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University technology transfer is big business. From 1996–2015, university technology transfer activities contributed almost six billion dollars to the United State gross domestic product. To accomplish these activities, universities implement entrepreneurial methods to transfer new creations made by members of the university community to the public benefit—specifically perfecting intellectual property rights, licensing, and creating start-ups. This Chapter begins with a brief overview of the history of university technology transfer to situate the discussion of current technology transfer issues. Technology transfer office structure options are then discussed before turning to an overview of intellectual property policies that govern the technology transfer process at various universities. Finally, the Chapter wraps up with a discussion of the incentives of various groups within the technology transfer process.

Universities and their associations in Washington, DC have long worked to influence the political processes that impact the laws and regulations that govern institutional university technology transfer practices. How those policies are instantiated in practice simultaneously shapes thinking in Washington, DC about how laws and regulations should superintend university technology transfer. To understand the political dimension of university technology transfer, the history, complexity, and heterogeneity of US research universities and their respective approaches to conveying innovations into the marketplace must be adequately studied.

The Bayh-Dole Act amended the Patent Act to facilitate patent ownership and commercialization by recipients of federal grants. Some jurisdictions have debated enacting legislation modeled on the Bayh-Dole Act but expanded to include intellectual property in addition to patents. South Africa has enacted such legislation. This Chapter examines how some universities in the United States have implemented commercialization policies beyond patents, implicitly expanding upon the mandate of the Bayh-Dole Act. The focus is on university intellectual property policies and litigation involving university owned copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

The concept of design suggests to advocates a compelling framework for reorganizing the scientific enterprise at research universities. A design-based perspective, according to adopters, directs helpful attention to the relationship between academic structure and the creation and exchange of knowledge. Its application entails forming and linking an array of STEM-centered organizational units (SOUs), opening the flow of personnel, resources, and intellectual property throughout a campus and in external partnerships. Such configurations are deemed critical in the global knowledge economy, but their development requires contending with less-linear, unstructured processes of change in research universities. This Chapter focuses on the extent to which—and how—concepts of design may be reconciled with dynamics of academic organization. It synthesizes research and theory on design and SOUs (centers and institutes, schools, and departments), charts possibilities for research on emerging 501(c)(3) entities, and offers concluding remarks about prospects for imagining and enacting novel university designs.

The Association of University Technology Managers (“AUTM”) is the industry group of professionals responsible for technology transfer at universities in the US and, increasingly, other parts of the world. This Chapter explores AUTM’s history and evolving organizational structure, particularly as it relates to its ability to effectively participate in policy advocacy involving intellectual property and technology transfer issues. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders and other research, the Chapter identifies three distinct eras within the history of AUTM and explores the organization’s involvement in policy advocacy efforts over time. The authors conclude that the organization’s current structure places it on its strongest footing yet and predict that AUTM’s voice in national and even international policy discussions involving intellectual property and technology transfer will only continue to strengthen.

In response to the increasing support of academic research by the private sector and highly-publicized instances of academic misfeasance, federal funding agencies, research institutions and scientific journals have developed a complex system for identifying, assessing, reporting and mitigating conflicts of interest. In this Chapter, we summarize some of the procedures implemented by these stakeholders in the research enterprise to reduce the impact of conflicts of interest.

This Chapter explains the role of intellectual property valuation in the context of the modern academic technology transfer office. Historical valuation approaches, such as cost, income, and market value, are still important tools that guide valuation discussions for the variety of deal structures confronted by technology transfer offices (“TTOs”), which increasingly include sophisticated equity and royalty buyout considerations. As the role of TTOs continues to evolve, this Chapter suggests that universities will adopt a broader (i.e. non-monetary) view of the value provided by their TTO, such as: university and TTO brand recognition, faculty and student recruitment, economic development, entrepreneurial opportunities for students and faculty, in addition to the ultimate goal of improving the world with products created from cutting-edge academic research. Accordingly, this Chapter proposes that TTOs will increasingly adopt portfolio-based valuation thinking, allowing TTOs to align their deal-making practices to maximize the full value (both monetary and non-monetary) of their university’s intellectual property portfolio.