Turning A Dollar From Research
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday October 1, 2007
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species would have struggled to survive had the present demands on academics to commercialise research applied in the past. Keeli Cambourne examines the state of play in the intellectual property debate at universities.
It used to be publish or perish on university campuses. These days it seems to be more patent or perish as the push for the commercialisation of intellectual property generated within the hallowed halls of higher education institutions gathers momentum. In the past decade most of Australia's larger universities have introduced a technology transfer centre onto their campuses. This is where the potential of any research may be realised. It is a place where academics can go to see if there is any commercial prospect for their innovation, inventions and ideas. At these tech transfer centres experts in the fields of patents, marketing and financial resources have been working to change the way academics think about the work they do. That's not to say that the brains of Australia are only thinking about the possible monetary returns they could get from research. Rather this is a quiet evolution from inside the ranks, educating the educators in how they can get their lifetime's work out into the wider community, with the hope of maybe generating a bit of extra income for themselves and their institutions. In the US the commercialisation of international property within higher education is governed under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which obliged universities to seek patents for scientific discoveries made by their staff with the support of federal funds. But the money generated from patenting ideas and innovations is not that significant, either in the US or in Australia. Not every patent becomes the basis of a business. Although some do, investment by tertiary institutions, industry partners and government can sometimes run into the millions of dollars.A Federal Government study in 2002, Best practice processes for university research commercialisation, found that in the US, one spin-off company is generated from a research expenditure of $130 million-$177 million. In comparison, for Australia the figures are $113 million per spin-off for the research-intensive universities, and $303 million for the medium and small research profile universities. Of course. there are always the success stories. Last year, a University of NSW PhD student in computer science was fending off offers from Yahoo, MSN and Google for the rights to a search engine algorithm he developed as part of his studies. A deal for the Orion algorithm was eventually struck with Google, and the student, Ori Allon, was enticed away from the university to work for the global internet company. The university will, of course, continue to get some revenue from the patent of the algorithm, but according to Les Field, deputy vice-chancellor of research, the financial return from such discoveries to the university only adds a small percentage to its bank balance. At the University of NSW, tech transfers are handled by NewSouth Innovations, and like most universities in Australia it works on a three-way split of any commercial returns from a patent. One-third of any financial gain goes to the researcher, one-third to the university and one-third to NewSouth Innovations."And that arrangement works in perpetuity," says Field. "So if a patent is picked up for commercialisation after the researcher has left the university, they are still entitled to their share."Universities are now much more aware of the commercialisation than they were 10 years ago. And researchers, even graduate students, are much more savvy as to the potential that commercialisation can bring." At the University of NSW there are about 3000 graduate and research students and staff, all after funding for projects on which they are working. Getting that funding is where tech transfer is essential, says Field, either by linking the researchers with industry partners or through government grants like the Australian Research Council's Linkage Projects scheme. Jeff Francis, the director of the research and innovation office at the University of Technology, Sydney, says the commercialisation of an innovation really gathered momentum in Australia around 2000 when the Government began encouraging universities to get the benefits of research out into the community. "One vehicle of that was through commercialisation," Francis says. Industry is becoming more involved in the early stages of commercialising research, often sponsoring specific projects for which they need research completed."There is a broad range of research and researchers that are more suited to commercial outcomes," he says."Our role is to negotiate a whole range of people to come back with commercialisation deals ... some may say they need further research done, and contract it back to the university." One concern about commercialisation of ideas which surfaced in the US and Australia is that it increases the incentives for researchers to keep their finds secret for longer than they otherwise might have. Only private information can be patented. Therefore a discovery is, in most cases, ineligible for patent protection if published before a patent is filed. This means researchers are often faced with a tough decision about whether to publish or patent - a completely different scenario than a decade ago, when universities were judged purely on how many of their academics were published in peer journals."The whole process of protecting IP means there is a need to be careful on how to publish and what to publish," says Francis. "By and large universities now recognise that need to delay results until the potential to commercialise is sorted out." One of the most significant roles of tech transfer centres has become to educate academics and researchers on the importance of keeping a lid on some of their discoveries while they are assessed for commercial potential. "It became apparent to universities that there was a need to protect ideas in order to commercially exploit them," says David Israel, a group manager of commercialisation at UniQuest, the tech transfer centre for Wollongong and Queensland universities. UniQuest has developed a workshop for research higher degree students and staff which is like a boot camp where they are run through the principles of what IP is and its potential, how to assess and protect it and commercialising the outcome. The program has been running for five years, and Israel says about 130 students go through it each year. Israel emphasises that just because universities are now taking the initiative to educate researchers about commercialisation, it is not only those interested in making money from their work who will go into the field. He concedes that research has become a lot more focused on specific problems with the advent of technology transfer. "Researchers enjoy the challenge of research, and the freedom of thinking that that career gives them," says Craig Peden, director of corporate relations at Wollongong University. He says technology transfer is about "trying to show researchers there is a potential parallel path and their ideas can be harvested successfully without compromising the academic tradition". "Commercialisation of IP in whatever form is the most successful way of ideas to get to the world. "But we also need to be sharp advocates of basic research inside universities because that is the basic feedstock, and the well of ideas will run dry if that is not there."
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald