The Not-A-Troll Club Sunday, August 01, 2021
Universities seek to ease the technology licensing process
A controversial new patent pool is designed to streamline the process by which big tech acquires the rights to use academic inventions. David Kramer, 7-30-21, Physics Today Fifteen prestigious universities have agreed to jointly license the patents they own in three physical sciences fields, aiming to become a one-stop shop where large tech companies can negotiate agreements to use their intellectual property. The University Technology Licensing Program (UTLP) began operations in September 2020, when the University of California’s Los Angeles and Berkeley campuses signed on. They were joined by Caltech and Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton, and Yale Universities along with SUNY Binghamton and the Universities of Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Southern California. In January the UTLP received antitrust clearance from the US Department of Justice, which concluded that the arrangement was unlikely to harm competition. Nonetheless, the program has drawn criticism from some digital-rights advocates, who argue that the partnership could enable the universities to pressure companies into paying for flimsy patents. The UTLP partners have agreed to pool their patents in the areas of big data, the internet of things (networks of sensors, smart home devices, and other physical objects connected over the internet), and autonomous vehicles. The organization will bundle as many or as few of those patents as the prospective licensee wants, says Orin Herskowitz, senior vice president of intellectual property and technology transfer at Columbia. A 15% share of the revenues from licensing will be split among all member universities regardless of whose patents are licensed. The partnership is meant to make it easier for big technology firms to license patents that are held by the member universities, Herskowitz says. “What we heard from industry is that their products often require licenses for many patents from many universities. If they had to go door-to-door, the transaction costs would be too high, even if they like and respect the patents.” As a result, a company might decide not to launch a new product, 110
UCLA Faculty Association Blog: 3rd Quarter 2021
