How to Invent and Protect Your Invention: A Guide to Patents for Scientists and Engineers

11.5 PATENTING AND MARKETING DEPARTMENTS; TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OFFICES

While independent inventors make patenting and marketing decisions themselves, most companies and universities have departments that make these decisions on behalf of the institution. In industry, intellectual property-related decisions are often fragmented over several departments, including the company's research leadership, legal department, business development department, and marketing and communications teams. At most universities, intellectual property decisions fall to a technology transfer office, a department dedicated solely to the process of moving inventions from within the university to industry partners, including start-up companies, for commercialization. Many universities have established research foundations to improve the technology commercialization process and to facilitate university industry collaboration. While technology transfer offices and research foundations often serve the same purpose (i.e., commercializing university technology), the research foundation, a separate legal entity with its own managers and commercially-focused board of directors, is often better suited to collaborate with industry and is not encumbered by university policies created for academic purposes. They are often able to provide legal protections for research sponsors that are problematic to state-owned universities, and they can hold equity in licensee start-up companies.

Corporations and universities often ...