by Brian Caterino

REVENUE GENERATED BY patents has become big business for cash-strapped universities. According to the annual survey by the Association of University Technology Managers, American Universities received more than $641 million in royalties and filed 7,612 patent applications in the 1999 fiscal year, while the number of patent applications was up almost 17 percent, the increase in royalties was only about 10 percent, considerably less than in past years. Patents developed by researchers and licensed to companies for commercial development include medicines, such as the anti-cancer drug taxol, biotechnology processes, scientific and medical devices and Internet tools, including search engines such as Lycos and Google.

Patent licensing has grown exponentially from insignificant levels to major importance over the past 30 years. Stanford University has one of the nation's largest patent offices. The Office of Technology Licensing began in 1970 as a pilot project with one scientist and only $55,000 in revenue from 3 patents. By 1995 it had 20 scientists, who managed over 1100 inventions had a budget of $2.3 million, and brought in over $44 million in royalties. Royalty revenues rose to a high of $61 million in academic year 1997-1998. The office's 1998-1999 report lists over 200 new inventions, concentrated in medical technology, computing and internet technologies.

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