UC Berkeley Successfully Merges Sponsored Projects and Licensing Offices

According Barry Bergman writing for UC Berkeley News on December 2, 2005 the University of California at Berkeley has mereged its Sponsored Projects Office that is responsible for attracting research money and resources to the campus, with the Office of Technology Licensing that is responsible for generating revenue-producing deals. The new organization is called the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA), under Carol Mimura as acting assistant vice chancellor.

"Because we're now under the same roof, the two activities are not
competitive," she explains. "For instance, if we decide the best way to manage a
patent or copyright is to induce research support — as opposed to trying to
maximize revenue by licensing that invention, and helping a company to sell
products based on it — that's a perfectly fine outcome. But in the past, if our
office had that outcome, it would have affected someone else's bottom line.
Under the newly organized unit, one outcome is not at the expense of the other."

Under IPIRA, corporate-sponsored research at Berkeley has roughly tripled,
Mimura says, and foundation support has also spiked. "It's fulfilling to know
that when you adopt new metrics for measuring success, and you acknowledge we're
all about research and we're doing all of this in order to stimulate investment
at Berkeley and get our research out for the public good, it also lowers the
barrier for companies to support our work. It also reduces suspicion, and it
lowers their hesitancy about giving gifts."

The restructuring, she adds, benefits not just the developing world but the
campus as well. Under IPIRA, corporate-sponsored research at Berkeley has
roughly tripled, Mimura says, and foundation support has also spiked. "It's
fulfilling to know that when you adopt new metrics for measuring success, and
you acknowledge we're all about research and we're doing all of this in order to
stimulate investment at Berkeley and get our research out for the public good,
it also lowers the barrier for companies to support our work. It also reduces
suspicion, and it lowers their hesitancy about giving gifts."

Despite such positive results, Berkeley's program remains the exception
among university licensing offices, even within the UC system, whose principles
require campuses to obtain "fair valuation" for research produced in their labs.
But value, Mimura insists, is in the eye of the IP-holder.