مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مجله مدیریت مالی چند ملیتی – Journal of Multinational Financial Management

Historically, Technology Transfer Offices engaged in licensing activities. The most prevalent of these endeavors included offering licensing options and licensing agreements to private industry. Licensing fees may have included a set dollar amount paid up front, monthly or yearly and/or running royalties that would have been assessed based on some percentage of sales or profits. In recent years, technology transfer professionals, with their universities’ consent, have added an alternative and potentially lucrative method of receiving payment in exchange for the rights to market technologies or inventions owned by their universities (Di Gregorio & Shane, 2003; Feldman, Feller, Bercovitz, & Burton, 2002; Marion, Dunlap, & Friar, 2012; Powers & McDougall, 2005).

Increasingly, research universities are accepting equity positions in spin-off ventures created to commercialize universities’ intellectual property. In the Association of University Technology Managers’ (AUTM’s) 2013 Licensing Survey, university respondents revealed that 818 startup companies were formed around universities’ intellectual property. Many of these newly formed companies remain in close proximity to their partner universities creating jobs for the schools’ graduates and stimulating the local economies. Willingness to accept equity in lieu of cash payments, as pointed out in the existing literature (Di Gregorio & Shane, 2003; Feldman et al., 2002; Marion et al., 2012; Powers & McDougall, 2005), may be predicated upon (a) the policies and culture of the research universities, (b) the predisposition and experience of the researchers/academic inventors, and (c) the characteristics of Technology Transfer Offices’ licensing managers.

In the early years of universities’ commercialization efforts, immediately following passage of the Bayh-Dole Patent and Trademark Amendments Act of 1980, many institutions considered equity positions in spin-off businesses to be excessively risky and a method of last resort for accepting payment in exchange for their intellectual property (Feldman et al., 2002). Through their research, however, Feldman et al. (2002) determined that attitudes and policies at research universities had evolved toward a more diversified portfolio of payment options. Feldman et al. (2002) investigated the inclination of Technology Transfer Office professionals to accept equity positions, as an alternative to license agreements, in spin-off companies established for the purpose of commercializing universities’ intellectual properties. These researchers analyzed 67 responses to a survey questionnaire sent to the 124 Carnegie I and II research universities that, at that time, had a formal structure for technology transfer. Feldman et al. (2002) concluded that universities were increasingly willing to accept equity, rather than license fees and royalty payments, in companies with the rights to market the universities’ new technologies or inventions.