Time to hold my hands up to a mistake. A while back, I put out a post about Quebec having a standardized commercialization agreement for its universities and how this was a model other provinces should be looking into. It looks like I jumped the gun, though, because while Quebec made moves in this direction, it seems the initiative was shelved after meeting with opposition from within the universities. Honestly, I think my desire for it to be true made me a little hasty in believing it, because boy do we need standardized commercialization agreements with universities. They would streamline the funding process so much, because with a single sheet of paper we’d be able to get rid of months of the pedantic back-and-forth that all too often kills off deals. I don’t think we need to wait for governments to take action on this—and it seems I’m not the only one who feels that way. I recently met a group comprising VC figures and representatives from the banking sector, and they had been giving serious thought to creating a template for what would more or less be a SAFE agreement, but for early-stage tech commercialization. I for one came away from the conversation feeling encouraged. Hopefully, we’ll have some updates on this front in the months ahead—and then, fingers crossed, a quicker flow of deals that build on some of the crucial research breakthroughs that are happening at Canadian universities right now.
Kyle Briggs
3w
This is something I am actively working on - but the drive for adoption will not probably come from TTOs. Even in cases where they are in agreement and willing, they are typically not empowered to set policy at an institutional level. Pressure from the community combined with an external reason to drive change (such as funding opportunities) will be required to encourage institutional policy makers to adopt this.
The research hospitals should also be included in this framework.
Lack of understanding of the Commercialization of IP and further needed development around the IP in order to create value, and this lack of collaboration from the universities, goes to the detriment of university R&D commercialization and value creation
It’s a real challenge Scott Pelton. Worth noting that Dal has possibly the most progressive IP approaches in Canada, and those who work with our commercialization office have great things to say.
Julie Guyard
2w
Well said. Let's get our Universities working together to open up paths-to-market. Founders, society, and the planet need it!
Kari LaMotte
3w
The frustration of dealing with a bespoke IP agreement (both between institutions and within the institutions themselves) is something I think everyone feels deeply who works in this space. But, I might also add that the very complexity within academic (i.e. multiple different faculties studying vastly different things, resulting in dramatically different paths to commercialization) means a truly standard agreement would be pretty challenging to create. A blanket agreement for all situations would likely backfire in certain contexts. E.g. a software spinoff has a different commercialization trajectory than a biotech, engineering or chemical innovation. A second consideration is that the "University" is more like a collective - each faculty has its own agreement with the university, and their own goals, etc. There is sensitivity within each institution that also must be navigated (we tend to see these universities as a sole entity like a company, when they operate very differently than that). But perhaps we are actually asking how we can create alignment for all parties that takes into account the vast amount of work it takes to commercialize after the technical invention has been made?
Andrew Opala
3w
We're familiar with 4 University Commercialization programs in the US that we really really like: UMich (Innovation Partnerships Team), UMinn (Technology Commercialization Office), UTA (I&C Office), and Drexel (Drexel Ventures). We've dealt with a lot in Canada and UW is the fastest and least complicated. Things may have changed in the past 10 years but UofT is perhaps the worst we have dealt with (the University owning ideas, instead of the inventors or the commercialization partners who drove the challenge and contributed to the invention). Not broadly scientific, but that's been our experience. We also look to the Milken Institute for technology transfer rankings. They also have a lot of tools and documentation on what to do as an investor or a commercialization partner to get the most out of the relationship with the US schools. Maybe they could give a hint to the Canadian schools as well.
Chang Han
3w
I will suggest that a general template is very possible, with some forks to account for the extremes of the range (think ai-based SaaS vs. therapeutic). However, we would benefit from the wide-ranging knowledge and network of Rich Carter on this question.
VP, IP of Intellectual Property Ontario
3wThanks Scott. This is a major problem that MANY people have been clamoring for, but a big part of the problem arises from Collective Agreements between individual universities and their faculty, etc. Some universities have inventor-owned policies, others have university-owned policies, and then others are more flexible. I can't tell you how many collaboration, research, funding, licensing and other commercialization agreements I've seen clients from all sectors give up on, simply because the process was too arduous and time consuming when working with universities. Some universities simply don't even have the internal expertise to be able to properly handle such agreements (which is often a funding problem). There are ways around this, and one is by having standardized agreements that cater to the university's policies (e.g. one template for inventor-owned universities, another for university-owned, etc.). There can also be guidelines for when its appropriate to take an ownership stake in a commercialization entity, when its appropriate to take a royalty, and when its appropriate to simply take $ amounts/access to tech that will assist with future university funding/research to build a tech ecosystem, etc.