Capitalizing on Institutional IP

Significant amount of funding is spent for the research work taken up in the universities and technologies developed are patented with the intention of getting revenue through licensing or sale of related Intellectual Property (IP).

But it has been observed that the academia has not been able to capitalize on the generated IP. The reason quoted quite often for this failure is that there exists a disconnect between the academia and industry, leading to filing of patents for technologies which have no real commercial value but has been done with the intention of justifying the expenditures or just improving the inventor’s credentials. The other reason could be that the academia is not well equipped to properly valuate the generated IP and market it as a package to attract buyers / licensees.

Though the latter reason sounds more plausible, there is another important reason which seems to have been overlooked and that is lack of enforcement of IP rights. Generation of revenue from patents is done by following a “Carrot & Stick” policy. In case of former, it is assumed that the patents would be of interest to various parties and hence revenue would be generated by sale / licensing of the IP to the interested parties. This aspect is already being addressed.

But in case of latter, it is basically identifying potential infringers of the patents and bringing them to the negotiating table for suitable payments depending on the extent of exploitation of the patent. While the academia puts up the details of their IP on the web in order to draw the attention of potential buyers / licensees, in the process, it inadvertently exposes the ideas to outside world where it is very much possible that unscrupulous elements may as well opt to copy the ideas and use them for their own business purpose without giving due acknowledgement to the inventors in the form of payment / license fee. It is this aspect which academia seems to have ignored, probably due to lack of time or suitable official machinery.

If the academia becomes pro-active in asserting their IP rights, it is envisaged that the generated IP would give more returns on investment.