Patent growth strengthens UW future

University patenting organizations often thrive on the long ball, with high-tech home runs providing the vast majority of royalty income for a campus.

But at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation – the nation’s oldest patent-management organization for a university – its heavy-hitting past is being bolstered by a new effort to hit for average.

See also: Fruits of inspiration: Recent WARF patents Gulbrandsen appointed managing director of WARF

Over the past five years, WARF has seen a dramatic increase in the number of university faculty disclosing potentially valuable inventions from the laboratory. And leaders believe that diverse portfolio will allow WARF to make even greater contributions to the university’s “margin of excellence.”

Since its inception in 1925, WARF has given back $455 million to UW–Madison in royalty revenues, which is helping seed a new generation of research. WARF grants averaging $17 million to $20 million each year help the Graduate School fund dozens of promising research areas, pay for named professorships and support students.

Royalties are now playing an essential role in supporting the Madison Initiative, an innovative public-private partnership that will enable the hiring of more than 100 new faculty in strategic areas. WARF also funds the Wisconsin Distinguished Fellowship Program, which may eventually support up to 400 graduate students.

Richard Leazer, managing director of WARF, says the organization had a total of 136 faculty research disclosures in 1994, while last year that number rocketed to 248 disclosures.

A similar boom is occurring in the licensing of UW–Madison patents to industry. There were 92 industry licenses managed by WARF in 1998-99, compared to only 29 five years before.

“We have two positive trends coming together right now,” says Leazer. “We have more high-level research with commercial potential being done on campus. And industry is showing a greater interest in our technologies.”

The “home runs” are, of course, pivotal to WARF’s success. The famous vitamin D-related patents of biochemist Hector DeLuca remain the bedrock of WARF patent royalties, accounting for roughly half of all revenue.

But because of the greater diversity of patent activity, WARF leaders see a number of potentially lucrative technologies in the pipeline. Carl Gulbrandsen, patents and licensing director of WARF, calls these “platform technologies,” the kinds of discoveries that have research, diagnostic and clinical applications, and can spawn generations of new patents.

Some of the latest platform technologies include the method of isolating and growing human stem cells; a new “gene chip” that greatly simplifies the ability of scientists to analyze DNA; and a surface- treatment technique for agricultural seeds that can improve crop growth and survival.

“It’s just an incredibly rich portfolio right now,” says Gulbrandsen. “WARF is blessed with having really great inventors and terrific technology. With close to 100 new licenses a year, this will start to pay off. We’re fighting the fight.”

Gulbrandsen notes that Wisconsin companies have traditionally reaped benefits in this process, with about 60 percent of all licenses staying with state businesses. WARF also has a new program to take equity in some of the startup companies spawned by UW–Madison patents. Gulbrandsen says this effort collectively adds to the state’s dramatic growth in biotechology-related business. A new study ranks Wisconsin 10th in the nation in biotech companies.

Virginia Hinshaw, dean of the Graduate School, is challenging faculty across campus to become a player in this process. Technology transfer, or closing the loop between federal funding, local research and real-world application, should become more of an instinctive – and expected – activity of all faculty, she says.

Technology transfer represents a partnership between the federal government, the university and the private sector. Federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation invest more than $260 million each year in the university, which has a responsibility to ensure research benefits are made available to society, she says.

Hinshaw is chair of a newly formed council on technology transfer that is taking a strategic approach to promoting this interaction between the university and private sector. Hinshaw emphasizes that faculty across all disciplines, from science to the humanities, should be pursuing the applications of their work. And smaller-scale patents are as important as blockbusters, since they can lead to new startup companies and create new jobs.

Perhaps the biggest benefits from WARF are to the university itself, since royalties help seed a new wave of basic research that might otherwise go unfunded. It’s becoming an increasingly important revenue source for major research universities: In 1997, university royalty income nationally reached $446 million. And WARF has for decades been in the nation’s top 10 royalty producers.

“This is a neat cycle of refilling and re-energizing and allowing the next generation to do their work,” Hinshaw says. “It’s really dependent on the intellectual capacity of our faculty, but also on their love for the university.”