Universities earned about $1.8-billion in the 2009 fiscal year from royalties and other payments for rights to academic inventions that underlie new drugs, software products, and energy-saving technologies, says a report released on Friday by the Association of University Technology Managers.
Although economic conditions were hardly friendly during the period, the universities and systems that participated in the latest version of the annual survey signed more deals in 2009 than in 2008. In 2009, the 153 respondents reported executing 4,624 licenses and options; in the previous year, the number of licenses and options signed was 4,416. The respondents also formed 555 spinoff companies based on academic inventions, about the same as in 2008. In 2009 there were 13 institutions or systems that formed 10 or more companies each.
The figures reflect “rock-solid performance” despite being “in the teeth of the global financial crisis,” says Ashley J. Stevens, the association’s president.
The income figure for 2009 is lower than the $2.4-billion reported in fiscal 2008 and the $2.1-billion in fiscal 2007. But in each of those earlier years, the totals were inflated by a single deal in which an institution (Northwestern University in 2008 and New York University in 2007) collected lucrative lump-sum payments by selling future rights to royalties on drugs. Without those transactions, the income for 2008 would have been about $1.3-billion and for 2007 about $1-billion, the report notes. There were no such lump-sum deals for survey participants in 2009.
As in years past, a handful of universities and systems accounted for most of the revenue. Four of them earned over $100-million each—Northwestern ($162-million), Columbia University ($154-million), New York University ($113-million), and the University of California system ($103-million). An additional 26 institutions or systems each reported income greater than $10-million (see related table).
Universities typically share proceeds from licenses with the faculty inventors and their departments, often providing about one-third to inventors, one-third to their departments, and one-third for the institution as a whole. (This month the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities announced a shift in its arrangement, joining several of its peers in taking 15 percent upfront for the technology-transfer office to cover patent and management costs, before awarding proceeds among inventors, their departments, and the institution.)
The universities do not report overall amounts of spending on technology transfer, but the report does give an indication of one key element of those costs: legal fees. More than 70 universities spent more than $1-million each for the costs of patenting and other legal activities. Twenty-one of those spent more than $4-million. About 45 percent of those costs are eventually reimbursed by the companies that license the inventions.
The rate at which universities filed for new patents was about the same in 2009 as in 2008.
Four of the 153 universities or systems reported anonymously; their information is included in calculations for some of the report’s analyses, but the institutions do not appear in the Data Appendix to the report, or in The Chronicle’s table.
The report, “AUTM U.S. Licensing Activity Survey: FY 2009 Summary,” also includes information from 27 research hospitals and institutes and one patent-management company. Information on how to obtain the report is available on the association’s Web site.
A separate report based on the association’s survey of Canadian institutions was also released on Friday.
