Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1994 [PAGE 630]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

618

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

(June 13

meeting of the Capital Development Board would be in July and that this issue might be considered then.

MEETING OF THE BOARD AS A COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

Mr. Lamont called this meeting to order and indicated that the board would hear presentations on the topic of intellectual property issues and policies. He asked Dr. Manning to introduce the presenters for this session. She introduced Dr. William Dick, director of Sponsored Programs at Urbana, and Dr. Mi Ja Kim, vice chancellor for research at Chicago, and Professor Larry Smarr, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana. In opening remarks for the session, Dr. Manning stated that the topic for discussion would be technology transfer, which is a major part of the University's mission and refers to the creation of knowledge and the transfer of that knowledge for public benefit. Dr. Manning explained that no university has to date earned very much on royalties from research products. She also pointed out that there are many relationships that develop with regard to intellectual property. The relationships involve: the faculty member as inventor, the sponsor of the research, the licensee/developer, and the University. It was noted that the Federal government is the sponsor for most university research and in recent years has relinquished ownership of most research products, as the probability of gain from an invention is usually unlikely. Dr. Manning stated that other sponsors are often interested in having exclusive rights from their investment in university research. She said that in making policy in this area it is important to keep the objectives clear. First, there is the goal of discovering new knowledge for the general good and, second, there is the goal of achieving revenue whenever possible — usually for support of more research. Dr. Kim then described an invention made at UIC and the process by which it reached market. In doing this Dr. Kim described the workings of the Intellectual Property Office at UIC and the ways that unit aids in invention development and technology transfer. The trustees discussed this and the point at which venture capital companies might become involved in invention development and technology transfer. Dr. William Dick next described the development of research relationships, particularly collaborative research relationships between the University and some companies in Illinois and across the country. He explained that the College of Engineering at Urbana receives about $135 million per year from such arrangements and of that, about $85 million is in sponsored research. He went on to describe processes that have been developed to encourage these relationships, and to optimize the research process and to make it fairly simple for the University to deal with a few strategic corporate partners. This involved having a single contract with these partners so that each time new research is started it is not necessary to draw up a new contract. Dr. Dick explained