UCI's Winning Strategy
OTA has developed a "win-win-win" strategy for building and sustaining UCI's relationships with industrial partners. The strategy is based on the existence of early stage technology for which a corporate partner is invited to take an option or license and to support continued research in the inventor's lab to further develop the invention.
UCI's faculty's research expertise may complement the company's R&D effort or provide a new platform technology opportunity. Improvement Inventions coming out of research can be rolled into the existing option or license at no additional cost and new inventions in the field can be added for a specific one-time consideration.
- The company wins because this research agreement;
- fulfills part of the option/license's diligence requirements;
- allows the inventor to collaborate with company scientists (without conflict of interest) along the path to a product;
- provides for the company sponsor to obtain certain licensing rights to new and improved inventions as a condition of its sponsorship.
- The faculty inventor wins by;
- obtaining funding to pursue his/her work
- having the opportunity to collaborate with company scientists
- accessing company facilities and equipment
- receiving a portion of the net license revenue.
- The University wins when it:
- receives revenue supporting overhead costs
- is reimbursed for patent costs by the Licensee
- recieves royalty and fee revenue to support research
- establishes a long-term relationship with the company.
- In the end, the public wins because more and better life-saving and life-enhancing products are commercialized more rapidly than either the University or the company could carry out on its own.
UCI Performance and Results
OTA's strategy is working. Since OTA's creation in 1990 and its formal delegation of authority in 1994, the office has made major contributions to the growth of UCI industry awards for basic and clinical research from $4 million to $18.6 million in FY2001-02. During 2002, this research was supported by 154 corporate research sponsors with 346 agreements concluded. UCI's national ranking for industry sponsored research has also improved during this period from 109th to 38th per the National Science Foundation. OTA has also:
- Expanded UCI's portfolio to over 450 active intellectual properties, 250 of which are patented/patent pending, many of which are being commercialized via 54 active license/option agreements.
- Increased annual patent revenue from $500k in 1992 to $5 million in 2002.
- Helped create 30 start-up companies formed to commercialize UCI technologies in such areas as software, high performance polymeric materials, functional genomics drug discovery, laser-based intracellular analysis, plasma electric power generation, tumor implants and cancer vaccines.
- Led the negotiations to establish a $40 million neuropsychiatric consortium (Stanford, Michigan, UC Davis and UC Irvine) for research and technology commercialization over 5 years.
- Established master agreements for the entire UC system with Amgen, Genetics Institute and Wyeth Laboratories.
- Established the first U.S. human embryonic stem cell research agreement with Geron.
- Negotiated a license agreement with a major pharmaceutical company for a triple transgenic mouse model for Alzheimer's Disease that was completed in six weeks.
