While new technology has the potential to create far-reaching benefits for society as a whole, innovations created at UCLA and other schools have the added benefit of providing an additional source of revenue for their respective universities.
The most recent annual report of the University of California Technology Transfer Program indicates that in 2007, the UC system as a whole earned an income of $116.9 million dollars from royalties for licensing patents.
In the same year, UCLA in particular received around $12 million, said Kathryn Atchison, vice provost of intellectual property and industry relations and vice chancellor for research at the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research.
Universities that receive federal funding for research have the ability to retain a certain percentage of the royalties earned when an inventor licenses his or her patent, said Earl Weinstein, assistant director of business development and licensing at the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research.
Atchison said that while $12 million is a small fraction of the total $900 million a year UCLA receives in the form of research funding, the money is still significant because it is not designated for a specific purpose, unlike most of sources of university funding.
“(The school) may use it wherever they have a piercing research need,” Atchison said.
The royalty income that UCLA receives is only a small portion of the total amount and is obtained after the money has been divided according to several formulas, Weinstein said.
After an invention has been created, the inventor files a patent, Weinstein said, before meeting with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to “find the best home for the technology,” which sometimes involves licensing the patent.
Weinstein also said the most important criteria in selecting the best company to take the invention to the market is that the company be able to develop the technology quickly and really make an effort to put it in the market.
Another factor that contributes to the selection of a corporation for the product is the Bayh-Dole Act, which tends to favor smaller entities, Weinstein said.
A federal act established in 1980 by Sens. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) and Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the Bayh-Dole Act also “allows a federally funded university to retain rights to intellectual property,” said William Tucker, executive director of the Technology Transfer and Research Administration at the University of California Office of the President.
Tucker said previously the federal government would retain the intellectual property rights, decreasing incentives for continued research and development.
But regardless of the existence of a federal act, there are several nuances which govern how the royalty money is divided, such as the year in which the inventor joined the university, Tucker said.
For example, Tucker said, if the inventor joined the university in the last five years, the net royalty income would be divided by giving 15 percent to the department chair for future research development, 35 percent for the inventors on the patent and about 12.5 percent for the general University of California fund.
The remainder of the money goes to the dean of the school where the invention was created for the purposes of the “teaching and research mission,” Atchison said.
In addition to providing revenue for UCLA, new innovations produced here have several additional benefits such as general economic development. New technologies lead to the creation of new companies based on these technologies, and new jobs, many of which are held by former UCLA students, Weinstein said.
Professor George Gruner of the physics and astronomy department is one such professor who has several patents licensed to his own three start-up companies, which employ several UCLA community members.
Gruner and his lab discovered a new set of materials to replace materials like silicon, which not only are more expensive to produce, but also require more energy.
“You take millions and millions of (small wires), and disperse it in water ““ then spray it onto surface, have natural core film of wires … so electricity goes through the network,” Gruner said.
These wires, made out of carbon, are creating what Gruner calls printed electronics, in which eventually people will be able to print out batteries among other things using a special ink-jet printer.
He also said being at a research university like UCLA is advantageous because of the facilities, interdepartmental links, and money brought in for research purposes, among other reasons.
Gruner is one among numerous faculty members at UCLA whose inventions have not only led to industry development and new technologies, but also have led to funding for the university to sustain further research.