Technology Transfer and patent licensing by universities has come a long way in the forty years since IP Hall of Fame inductee Niels Reimers first established the Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) at Stanford.

Since then, many academic institutions and laboratories have established some form of Technology Transfer Office, or TTO, as they're generally called, or have designated someone to manage the marketing and licensing of technology invented at the university. There's even a specialty publication dedicated to providing the latest information and best practices, titled Technology Transfer Tactics.

Technology Transfer Tactics is independent and unbiased. It is not affiliated with any organization, government agency, or foundation, or with any vendor or supplier. It is entirely funded by subscription revenue, and accepts no advertising.

For the current issue of the Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter, Cameron J. McCoy of the University of Oklahoma was interviewed about their Intellectual Property Management Office (IPMO), which we've also written about here on our corporate weblog, in connection with the implementation there of IP.com's InnovationQ workflow management software.

You can read the article here and, if you're interested in the latest tactics for technology transfer and licensing, you might want to subscribe to the newsletter of Technology Transfer Tactics.

In addition to the article about the University of Oklahoma's IPMO, the June 2009 Issue of Technology Transfer Tactics has interesting pieces with these headlines:

• TTOs take part in mad scramble for research dollars.
• Examine COI policies as big pharmas take bigger stake in early-stage research.
• Model for patent protection at Virginia Tech speeds up commercialization process, but challenges remain.
  
• TTO uses technology to target IP management/marketing gains.
• ‘Trolls’ have a thing or two to teach TTOs about patent protection.
• Florida start-ups to double with integrated statewide program.

 Click here to subscribe to the Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter

Each issue targets specific challenges in recognizing, protecting, and “marketing” potentially valuable research results, moving the discovery from the sheltered world of the laboratory to successful wide utilization, funding these challenges, and ensuring proper division of recognition and resultant monies. Our editors and writers report expert advice, successful case histories, legal perspectives, and other information that will enable hurdles to be surmounted efficiently and with prudent use of limited resources.

Here's a link to the current issue of Technology Transfer Tactics.

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The University of Oklahoma's Intellectual Property Management Office is in the business of developing relationships with researchers and providing to them the benefits of commercialization of their projects. The IPMO focuses on getting value from the technology that is developed at OU which, in turn, increases the university’s research, and creates new companies or finds companies that can benefit from that technology, all of which contributes directly to the intellectual, economic, social and cultural vitality of the state and the nation.

Yesterday, IP.com and the University of Oklahoma announced the launch of the InnovationQ Technology Transfer Workflow application for the University of Oklahoma's Intellectual Property Management Office. The system was designed to improve decision-making, secure IP records, and enhance the marketing of university intellectual property to prospective licensees.

"The chief goal was to improve the ability of the University of Oklahoma to identify, secure, and market the incredible research that occurs on their campuses," says Tom Petrocelli, IP.com's SVP for Enterprise Software. "Not only will the University of Oklahoma's IPMO be able to make better decisions about their ground-breaking research, they will be able to more effectively discover and attract licensees for those ideas."

InnovationQ helps companies to legally safeguard their intellectual property, derive more value from ideas, and speed the monetization of innovation. With streamlined processes, collaboration tools, and a secure system for managing innovation, InnovationQ effectively protects and enhances intellectual property from its conception.

"IP.com is designed to capture innovation at a very early stage and automate common but tedious IP related processes," says Colin FitzSimons, Associate VP for Technology Development and the Executive Director of the Intellectual Property Management Office at the University of Oklahoma.

InnovationQ offers the flexibility to integrate with existing software systems and corporate LDAP directories. This simplifies the process of assigning user and group roles within the system and accessing existing records, ultimately increasing compliance. Researchers and faculty are more likely to submit inventions -- as they can continually track the progress and status of each disclosure. It creates transparency between researchers and the IPMO.

"InnovationQ provides us with a suite of IP marketing tools," says Cameron McCoy, Director of Technology Marketing for the Intellectual Property Management Office at the University of Oklahoma. "We are collaborating with IP.com to create a unique innovation dashboard for technology managers to view reports, assess activities, and take action on their technologies and non-confidential summaries. It provides a platform for us to showcase our licensable content through a custom technology marketing portal -- providing OU with new commercialization opportunities."

InnovationQ delivers web-based, onsite intellectual property management solutions including invention disclosure review, patent analysis to assess acquisitions and divestitures, publication clearance, and R&D collaboration. IP.com configures these user modules to customer specifications yielding an application that is unique to customers.

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