Inteum and similar systems are really a final destination for patent information, where TTOs can manage licenses, agreements, and payments, says Mark Didas, director of marketing for IP.com in
Amherst, NY. “InnovationQ works upstream and downstream of Inteum to assist TTOs in making better, more efficient decisions about disclosures and to provide a workflow that can help create nonconfidential summaries for the marketing team. Ultimately, we want to co-exist with Inteum -- and be able to funnel information in and out.”

The university is conducting a five-stage implementation:

• Stage one is organizing the foundation of InnovationQ and setting up a secure repository. This essentially involves the InnovationQ team “looking at the types of data you have and what data you are seeking to collect,” says Didas. On the security front, InnovationQ locks down files to maintain integrity and provide a defensible background, says McCoy. The IPMO chose to store data on its own secure servers, but InnovationQ also generates a digital fingerprint (date stamp) for
every version of a document within the system. And the system allows TTOs to give certain departments or individual users either full or limited access to specific documents, says Didas. “For example, some might have ‘read only’ access, where they can preview MTAs or licensing agreements.”

Increased transparency

• Stage two is one of two workflows currently in development, says McCoy. InnovationQ uses a web-based portal to achieve a completely automated invention disclosure filing workflow that allows inventors to collaborate online.

The current disclosure process at Oklahoma works like this: Inventors download the invention disclosure form from the IPMO website. They fill out the form, print it, sign it, and then send it to
IPMO. Tech transfer staff must scan the disclosure form to enter it into their system. “In doing so, the document becomes a picture, and none of the data is available to us for searching,” McCoy points out.

With InnovationQ, “an inventor will be able to log in and complete the entire disclosure process online,” says McCoy. “This not only offers convenience to our inventors, but it gives us a produced
document that is searchable. We are then able to pull search terms out of that document to use in our process of marketing the technology.”

An electronic submission process should ensure that “a TTO is getting consistent disclosures: disclosures that have the same format and that are capturing the same type of data,” adds Didas.
Researchers also can stay in the loop, he points out. “The researcher or the person who authors the disclosure can elect to receive a notification every time their disclosure passes a key milestone in the invention disclosure workflow.”

One of IPMO’s basic goals is “to become more transparent,” says McCoy. “The online functionality of InnovationQ should provide a significant step toward achieving that goal. We will be able to open
the doors and let our researchers see what we are doing and when we are doing it. In turn, they will be able to have more input into the process -- and we can have better communication with them.”

• Stage three sets up another workflow designed to work in sync with the invention disclosure workflow. Specifically, InnovationQ automates the disclosure analysis, “allowing a technology manager and all appropriate resources to together move a technology through the decision processes after the disclosure form is completed via the online process,” says McCoy.

InnovationQ is well established in corporate settings, but only entered the university TTO market about a year ago. As an early adopter, the Oklahoma TTO has worked with IP.com to define standardized “best practices” in disclosure analysis that will meet the needs of most TTOs, says McCoy. “At the same time, the workflow is flexible enough that it can be customized to the processes of individual TTOs.”

The InnovationQ workflow includes collaborative tools. For example, during the disclosure analysis process, a number of questions typically go back and forth between TTO staff, the inventor, and a patent law firm. “These conversations usually take place via Microsoft Word or e-mail systems,” says McCoy. “Currently, TTO staff can leave a note in Inteum referencing the conversation, but really none of these conversations gets tracked.” InnovationQ fills that gap, allowing staff “to have fully tracked and recorded conversations within a secure environment,” he explains. “This is really useful from both a defensibility standpoint and a functional standpoint.”

In addition, the system includes delegation and consultative features. A technology manager who is responsible for approving a document can delegate his responsibility for that record only to a colleague with greater expertise on the specific technology,
explains Didas. Or the technology manager can ask one or more subject matter experts to provide feedback on the technology before he makes a decision. “So InnovationQ can break the traditional workflow and send the record to another person to make an approval or a recommendation. Then the record will proceed on the normal workflow path,” he says. In addition, any changes to the documents are made while also preserving the original or previous version, so “TTO staff can see a full history of the document,” McCoy notes.

A TTO dashboard

• Stages four and five “are both new developments on the InnovationQ core system resulting from collaboration between [the university] and IP.com,” says McCoy.

Stage four sets up a dashboard system that manages the daily workflow of IPMO’s technology managers as they progress in the patent process. Didas offers this example of how the dashboard works for a licensing manager who is responsible for 20 disclosures
or patents: Once logged into InnovationQ, the user has a starting point called a technology manager view. From here, the licensing manager can see all of his 20 disclosures (and the status of each) as a starting point. “The manager would be able to answer such
questions as: Do we have a nonconfidential summary? Is this technology exposed on our marketing portal? Do we have a patentability study?” says Didas.

Then the manager can drill down on each technology and get a detailed picture, he says. “For example, if a disclosure or nonconfidential summary for a technology is being publicly exposed on the marketing portal, the manager can see the metrics (e.g., how many times it has been previewed). So from a marketing perspective, they can make some general assumptions about marketability based on the eyeballs that the technology is attracting.”

The dashboard is a technology overview, providing TTO managers with access to a complete information trail or history for each technology they manage, explains Didas. “In addition, the system will send personal e-mails to the technology manager when key events occur related to these technologies, and the manager can align related technologies within their system.”

The next release of InnovationQ -- slated for this summer -- will incorporate market due diligence into the dashboard, he says. “It will permit a technology manager to take the patent or technical
disclosure, as well as perhaps enter in key words related to that technology, and the system will return a list of companies patenting in that space, almost like an infringement alert.”

This function also helps with marketability analysis, giving TTOs a ready-made list of targeted marketing prospects, Didas comments. “For example, if you have a patent on a technology that prevents corrosion in titanium tanks and you do a search of related key words, you will find other companies that have patents on titanium or something to do with corrosion.”

Dashboards eventually will also be developed “for all levels of a TTO, inventors, and even university administration,” adds McCoy. “This is important from a transparency standpoint.”

Stage five is a technology marketing portal. “The marketing portal should provide typical business web functionality,” says McCoy. “For example, it will have different types of search capabilities, whether that is a tag search, a browse through, or a word search. The portal also will give us RSS feeds on specific technologies or groups of technologies, and people will be able to bookmark or take action on different technologies.”

These interactive features tie directly into the online disclosure system, notes McCoy. Technology managers can create nonconfidential summaries from the searchable disclosures and then publicly expose the summaries on the marketing portal, Didas explains.

Progress so far

The IPMO has installed the InnovationQ core system and staff are current testing it. His ultimate goal for the system is to generate more licenses. “We should have some hard data on whether this is working sometime in the late fall or in early spring 2010,” says McCoy.

The return on investment generated by a secure portfolio, better communication, and efficient automated workflow processes can be difficult to quantify, acknowledges Didas. “However, the system is designed for TTOs to be able to defer unnecessary costs by vetting technology earlier in the development cycle. The goal is for universities to be able to save resources downstream in, for example, legal costs for opinions, comprehensive patentability searches, and filing fees when they don’t pursue technologies that they decide are not patentable.” Factors influencing the cost of InnovationQ include “the number of modules, the amount of customization, the level of integration with other systems, and the number of workflows,” says Didas. “Typically, these modules are staggered to disburse costs while easing users into the new functions.” Considering the cost of one patent filing, many TTOs could cover the price tag by simply deferring two or three patents, he notes.

Contact McCoy at cmccoy@ou.edu or 405-325-3800; contact Didas at mdidas@ip.com or 716-362-4562, ext. 109.

About Technology Transfer Tactics

Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter was launched in early 2007 by BizWorld, Inc, a privately held national science and business publishing company headquartered in Naples, FL. The founder, President and Publisher is Dr. Leslie C. Norins. The audience for this periodical is, broadly, anyone who has an important role in discovering, encouraging, funding or promulgating the transfer or translation of research into useful, practical products which can yield wide benefits. The readership includes institutional directors and managers of technology transfer or translational research, laboratory chiefs, venture capitalists, corporate development officers, intellectual property attorneys, and licensing experts. Subscribers come from the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors, worldwide.

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