UT System 7th On List of Top Academic Patent Recipients of 2021

[TwiceHorn 31535]

https://www.patentdocs.org/2022/01/harrity-analytics-releases-list-of-top-100-colleges-universities-institutes-receiving-patents-in-202.html

Pretty lofty company.  Cal System and MIT not surprising.

What is surprising is Arizona, and yes, that is Free Shoes U, not UF system. 

Edited January 27, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[TwiceHorn 31535]

That particular blog has a bit of a focus on life science patents.  Some additional information about non-academic top patent grantees here. https://www.patentdocs.org/2022/01/ipo-harrity-analytics-release-list-of-top-300-patent-holders-for-2021.html  As well as top life science patentees.

It appears that the Florida, Arizona, and UT Systems are all pretty strong on life sciences stuff, which is not terribly surprising for Texas, at least, with UT-SW and MD Anderson.  Still surprised at Arizona and FSU.

Edited January 27, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, I'm gonna spend the rest of my week scratching my head on the Florida System.

To your surprise though, it's not just Free Shoes U or UF System.  their system is all-in-one.  They're aggregated as one, especially for shit like this.  They musta had some 137-part patent that multiple campuses were involved in.  ETRA and ITRA (3 and 4), those are largely state-sponsored research projects in the Pacific Rim that are held on collegiate campuses as a matter of convenience.  I mean, we do it too but we are the lead on it with their funding and basic involvement.  

Yeah, what's really suprising to me is Arizona and Florida.  FUCK.  here we go down the rabbit hole.

[TwiceHorn 31535]

4 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, I'm gonna spend the rest of my week scratching my head on the Florida System.

To your surprise though, it's not just Free Shoes U or UF System.  their system is all-in-one.  They're aggregated as one, especially for shit like this.  They musta had some 137-part patent that multiple campuses were involved in.  ETRA and ITRA (3 and 4), those are largely state-sponsored research projects in the Pacific Rim that are held on collegiate campuses as a matter of convenience.  I mean, we do it too but we are the lead on it with their funding and basic involvement.  

Yeah, what's really suprising to me is Arizona and Florida.  FUCK.  here we go down the rabbit hole.

Ah, you are correct.  I skimmed the Florida State System wiki and site and didn't notice that the other system was even smaller schools.

One of the reasons ITRI and ETRA are on there is that their patents mostly are Asian-originating.  Asians tend to file patents on every-damn-thing, and break what would be a single patent to a US or European entity into 2 or 3 or even 5 patent applications.  Often that strategy means their patents aren't granted in the US because they're too skimpy, but if you're filing 2-3-5 times as many patents as the US entities, you're bound to end up with more.

Edited January 27, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, their setup is strange for a large state.  I'm betting dollars to donuts as it continues to explode in funding and population, they'll revisit that.  no matter what, it'll never be goofier than "small government" Texas though---where we have 7 systems...5 more than the nearest competitor (and no folks, that's not a good thing...this is like golf...big states need 2...small states need 1).  

Anyway, I'm curious to see what Florida System was up to this past year.  Arizona is a bit of a head-scratcher but they do much more work with the DoD and DoE, it could make perfect sense.  Rest of the list is the usual suspects except Florida.  

I'm guessing it was 50 patents alone on how to get people to eat other people in alleyways in the name of partying and tourism.  But we shall see, I suppose...

[Ag with kids 581]

I've got 4 patents...do I get a cookie?

[Guest Lobo]

No, but you are encouraged to get so much as an associate's degree from another institution to further distance yourself from Texas A&M.  

You didn't get those patents because of A&M, you got them in spite of A&M.  

[Ag with kids 581]

7 minutes ago, Lobo said:

No, but you are encouraged to get so much as an associate's degree from another institution to further distance yourself from Texas A&M.  

You didn't get those patents because of A&M, you got them in spite of A&M.  

That's a lot of words to say you don't have any patents yourself...

[Guest Lobo]

Ya got me.  I have zero patents.  One of only a few Texans without one.  If you think that's a lot of words, you're really not gonna like the patent application process.   

[AeroHorn 754]

<not so humble brag> I am on this list List of prolific inventors - Wikipedia

 

[elfenix 34332]

we're getting beaten by floriduh and arizona?  wtf?

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2082]

8 hours ago, AeroHorn said:

<not so humble brag> I am on this list List of prolific inventors - Wikipedia

 

Ronald S. Cok,imo

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2082]

21 minutes ago, elfenix said:

we're getting beaten by floriduh and arizona?  wtf?

easy to have outliers not representative of anything in particular.  someone might have one b.s. application that turns into 30 b.s. patents.

[Ag with kids 581]

12 hours ago, Lobo said:

Ya got me.  I have zero patents.  One of only a few Texans without one.  If you think that's a lot of words, you're really not gonna like the patent application process.   

Thank GOD my company did all the leg work for that...I've seen the process.  It's insane.  Plus...it takes FOREVER to get them issued.

[TwiceHorn 31535]

8 hours ago, AeroHorn said:

<not so humble brag> I am on this list List of prolific inventors - Wikipedia

 

Never seen that list before.  Interdasting.

Kind of appalling the number of troll-ish entities that appear there.

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2082]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

Never seen that list before.  Interdasting.

Kind of appalling the number of troll-ish entities that appear there.

several intellectual ventures entries.

[Ag with kids 581]

4 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

easy to have outliers not representative of anything in particular.  someone might have one b.s. application that turns into 30 b.s. patents.

That's how a lot of them work.  In fact, I got an original patent that's turned into those 4...The patent attorneys have to justify their salary I guess...

Now, we had this one guy that basically got several patents every year I was there - I think he had 150+ when I left there.  And since he got royalties for each one, he was probably making more money from his patents than his salary...

[TwiceHorn 31535]

10 minutes ago, Ag with kids said:

That's how a lot of them work.  In fact, I got an original patent that's turned into those 4...The patent attorneys have to justify their salary I guess...

Now, we had this one guy that basically got several patents every year I was there - I think he had 150+ when I left there.  And since he got royalties for each one, he was probably making more money from his patents than his salary...

There were several dudes at IBM making more money off patent filing bonuses (they don't pay royalties, or didn't) than their salaries.

That was back the day when IBM led the pack with ~2500 granted patents annually.  Now they're up to ~8500 and arguably do less as a company than they did in the mid 90s.

[Mitch Cumsteen 18574]

UT is historically great at filing patents. Not so great at commercializing technology. I haven't worked with them in years on anything so maybe it's changed, but back in the day it was really frustrating working with them. 

 

[TexasEd 8077]

1 hour ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

UT is historically great at filing patents. Not so great at commercializing technology. I haven't worked with them in years on anything so maybe it's changed, but back in the day it was really frustrating working with them. 

 

I worked at a company where the founders worked at the JJ Pickle Research Campus when they developed their technology in conjunction with DARPA grants and then filed for the patents.  They left Pickle and founded their own company to commercialize the patents.

I know I am oversimplifying.  It was a very complicated case.  A lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous.

[TwiceHorn 31535]

2 hours ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

UT is historically great at filing patents. Not so great at commercializing technology. I haven't worked with them in years on anything so maybe it's changed, but back in the day it was really frustrating working with them. 

 

How so?  Generally, for a university, commercializing technology means "licensing out" to some commercial entity.  Is that what you refer to?  Were the terms onerous?

Until the mid-90s sometime, the delightful Dudley Dobie was the head IP counsel at UT System and maybe he was spread too thin or too nice a guy.  When he retired, he was replaced with some less pleasant folks that maybe made things harder than they needed to be.

Edited January 27, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[Mitch Cumsteen 18574]

40 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

How so?  Generally, for a university, commercializing technology means "licensing out" to some commercial entity.  Is that what you refer to?  Were the terms onerous?

Until the mid-90s sometime, the delightful Dudley Dobie was the head IP counsel at UT System and maybe he was spread too thin or too nice a guy.  When he retired, he was replaced with some less pleasant folks that maybe made things harder than they needed to be.

Like I said, it's been a long time since I've dealt with them and my memory is fuzzy... but IIRC, it wasn't that the terms were necessarily onerous but that there was a ton of red tape and it took forever to get the appropriate approvals and signatures on everything. I think they've de-centralized a bit since then and the member institutions have a little more autonomy than they used to, so it's probably better now. 

[Doc Reeves 6434]

We going balls deep with that cobalt battery motherfuckers

[AeroHorn 754]

3 hours ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

Ronald S. Cok,imo

🙂 His life history sounds lot more interesting than mine.

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Never seen that list before.  Interdasting.

Kind of appalling the number of troll-ish entities that appear there.

There are 3 groups of companies:

- pure IP play ones such as Intellectual Ventures. They treat patents purely as a financial asset with legal team as operations and engineering serving the legal team. The engineers are there to see what is in the market and explain the tech to lawyers. Lawyers then read that into the patents and go after those companies. There are some pure trolls that patent whatever comes into their mind and see if it flies in court. The others actually buy patents from companies, bundle them into different portfolios and license/litigate them. This makes sense to sellers of patents too because of the nature of their business, they can't or don't want to monetize their patents.

- R&D companies such as IBM, Bell Labs, etc with substantial R&D budgets where hundreds of Ph.D.s work on future stuff not tied to shipping products. For these companies, patents are an aggressive asset to carve out future roadmaps, leverage through standards, grow licensing revenue, etc. This is a legitimate business that benefits from the patent office and drives innovation. There are quite a few small companies too that follow this model.

- Other companies that file patents as non-core activity to encourage innovation during their product development. For them, these are largely defensive assets so that others dissuaded from filing patent infringement claims against their products. It's usually these companies that sell their patents to the first group because they keep a license to use/modify for themselves when they sell.

3 hours ago, Ag with kids said:

That's how a lot of them work.  In fact, I got an original patent that's turned into those 4...The patent attorneys have to justify their salary I guess...

Now, we had this one guy that basically got several patents every year I was there - I think he had 150+ when I left there.  And since he got royalties for each one, he was probably making more money from his patents than his salary...

There is a lot behind patent filing process. The goal of a patent lawyer is to guarantee the company as much domain as possible for as long as possible with the strongest boundaries and most general claims. Once the patent is filed, the patent office responds after 1-2 years (there are ways to pay more to get earlier response) saying that this idea is already invented, the claims are too general, some claims are too different from others and should be filed separately, the method claims are too many, etc. The lawyers will delete, say, 15 of the original 50 claims, take out another 20 because they are different to submit as separate patent, etc. Now, the engineers are also working and they come up with more ideas on the same topic. The lawyers try to see if they can add these new ideas with the original filing date to get earlier invention date compared to what competitors could be doing. They find common language with the first patent and file continuations and divisionals. So, if the original idea is strong and the company is putting resources into that activity, it is easy to see it grow into a portfolio of patents through combined engineering and lawyering.

1 hour ago, TexasEd said:

I worked at a company where the founders worked at the JJ Pickle Research Campus when they developed their technology in conjunction with DARPA grants and then filed for the patents.  They left Pickle and founded their own company to commercialize the patents.

I know I am oversimplifying.  It was a very complicated case.  A lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous.

Stanford is great at that, with Silicon Valley being the proof. It is not easy to go from a patent to payoff. Patents cost money to file and maintain. An entity generating 100 patents/year probably has 1000-3000 live patents that cost 1M-3M/year to maintain. That is just paper patents. Actual R&D behind it probably cost multiple times that. And taking that R&D to products/revenue will cost multiple times more. To license, the licensee should see value in it because they have to invest R&D and engineering knowing that only a minority of ideas actually succeed. The people who know best are the students that worked on it, and the universities should enable them by starting incubators, etc. and being very generous with how "tightly" they hold onto the IP. This is the easiest way to see IP turn into products and whatever they lose by being generous in terms, they gain by these students living the startup lives and attracting venture funding.

[Bevo 13601]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

How so?  Generally, for a university, commercializing technology means "licensing out" to some commercial entity.  Is that what you refer to?  Were the terms onerous?

Until the mid-90s sometime, the delightful Dudley Dobie was the head IP counsel at UT System and maybe he was spread too thin or too nice a guy.  When he retired, he was replaced with some less pleasant folks that maybe made things harder than they needed to be.

Tell me what you think of University Tech Transfer Offices. Here is my off-the-cuff opinion: Universities spend a lot of money on tech transfer and rightfully so but the transfer offices aren't run like a business. They are run as an extension of universities and politics are heavily involved. Stanford and the UC system made a ton of money off PCR and the science of electronic synthesizers. However, there is a lot more trash than big hits. Universities will spend tons of money on foreign patents, etc. before there is an idea of its commercialization potential. This is especially true for technology from more prestigious labs that the university coddles because they want to remain in good favor with the lab director. Personally, I could go through a university's portfolio and throw out 80% of it. But, I don't think I am smart enough to get things 100% correct. In any case, because of this rush to patent, the profitability of tech transfer offices is pretty low. I found the article below, but it is old and I don't personally know where things stand now.

Abstract

An analysis was made of the financial profitability/loss of technology transfer programs in U.S. universities, hospitals, and research centers for 1995. Data were extracted from the AUTM (Association of University Technology Managers) survey and other published information. Royalty payments were compared to estimates of technology transfer office costs, patent fees, legal expenses, and new research grants. Approximately half of the programs in these institutions appeared to operate at a profit, albeit some had profits of several million dollars. Many smaller university technology transfer programs have been in existence only 5-10 years and presumably have not transferred sufficient technology for a profitable royalty stream. When estimates were made of institution funds that are spent locally, the community benefit of technology transfer programs was $434 million.

[TwiceHorn 31535]

21 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Tell me what you think of University Tech Transfer Offices. Here is my off-the-cuff opinion: Universities spend a lot of money on tech transfer and rightfully so but the transfer offices aren't run like a business. They are run as an extension of universities and politics are heavily involved. Stanford and the UC system made a ton of money off PCR and the science of electronic synthesizers. However, there is a lot more trash than big hits. Universities will spend tons of money on foreign patents, etc. before there is an idea of its commercialization potential. This is especially true for technology from more prestigious labs that the university coddles because they want to remain in good favor with the lab director. Personally, I could go through a university's portfolio and throw out 80% of it. But, I don't think I am smart enough to get things 100% correct. In any case, because of this rush to patent, the profitability of tech transfer offices is pretty low. I found the article below, but it is old and I don't personally know where things stand now.

Abstract

An analysis was made of the financial profitability/loss of technology transfer programs in U.S. universities, hospitals, and research centers for 1995. Data were extracted from the AUTM (Association of University Technology Managers) survey and other published information. Royalty payments were compared to estimates of technology transfer office costs, patent fees, legal expenses, and new research grants. Approximately half of the programs in these institutions appeared to operate at a profit, albeit some had profits of several million dollars. Many smaller university technology transfer programs have been in existence only 5-10 years and presumably have not transferred sufficient technology for a profitable royalty stream. When estimates were made of institution funds that are spent locally, the community benefit of technology transfer programs was $434 million.

The nature of patents, that they must be filed domestically within one year of any public disclosure or commercial use, and abroad within one year of the domestic filing date (and that before ANY public or commercial use) is that they must be filed long before commercial potential can even be realistically assessed, much less realized.

So any entity that engages in good faith patenting will have many times more patents than commercially valuable technologies (assuming one patent per technology, which is a rotten assumption).  The vast, vast majority of patents are "paper patents."  And many commercially valuable technologies are patented long before they become commercially valuable.  Goodenough's Li+ patents are an example of that.  Probably this latest one, too.

All universities are relative newcomers to the patent game, some moreso than others.  Sometimes, the best event for a university is not a patent license, but a patent infringement lawsuit.

[Bevo 13601]

49 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

All universities are relative newcomers to the patent game, some moreso than others.  Sometimes, the best event for a university is not a patent license, but a patent infringement lawsuit.

Most of what you said is true, but universities waste so much time and effort on junk - things like a baculovirus expression system with a different antibiotic resistance gene. If it is immediately known that pharma isn't interested in it, the money that can be made off of licensing it to a life science company won't pay for the patent costs.

As for what I quoted above, a couple of things are wrong:

First, Bayh–Dole happened in 1980. I know it makes us feel old, but that was 42 years ago. So tech transfer isn't that young.

Second, going after patent infringers is always a little tricky. With PCR, the universities went after pharma hard and went mildly after the life science companies, but they let university and government researchers do what they wanted. I thought it was handled well. OTOH, in Wisconsin and Minnesota the universities hold lots of patents in imaging technologies. Meanwhile, Siemens, GE, Toshiba, etc., violate each others patents and then they do cross licenses where no one pays anything to anyone. It works out fine for the companies, but the universities who develop the technologies pretty much get screwed. The companies spend a lot of money supporting some of these university labs though and give them things like 10.5 Tesla MRI machines, so it makes it tricky for tech transfer offices to go after them.

[TwiceHorn 31535]

39 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Most of what you said is true, but universities waste so much time and effort on junk - things like a baculovirus expression system with a different antibiotic resistance gene. If it is immediately known that pharma isn't interested in it, the money that can be made off of licensing it to a life science company won't pay for the patent costs.

As for what I quoted above, a couple of things are wrong:

First, Bayh–Dole happened in 1980. I know it makes us feel old, but that was 42 years ago. So tech transfer isn't that young.

Second, going after patent infringers is always a little tricky. With PCR, the universities went after pharma hard and went mildly after the life science companies, but they let university and government researchers do what they wanted. I thought it was handled well. OTOH, in Wisconsin and Minnesota the universities hold lots of patents in imaging technologies. Meanwhile, Siemens, GE, Toshiba, etc., violate each others patents and then they do cross licenses where no one pays anything to anyone. It works out fine for the companies, but the universities who develop the technologies pretty much get screwed. The companies spend a lot of money supporting some of these university labs though and give them things like 10.5 Tesla MRI machines, so it makes it tricky for tech transfer offices to go after them.

Well, I might disagree that you can know in advance that no one is interested in it, just as you can't really know whether it's going to be a massive commercial success.

And, yeah electronics patents tend to be no fun because they are always cross-licensed or become standards-essential, and that largely takes the fun out of it.

[TexasEd 8077]

17 hours ago, Bevo said:

Most of what you said is true, but universities waste so much time and effort on junk - things like a baculovirus expression system with a different antibiotic resistance gene. If it is immediately known that pharma isn't interested in it, the money that can be made off of licensing it to a life science company won't pay for the patent costs.

So is there another motive to file like a feather or flair for the university, professors and students?  At some level we have people bragging that they have 4 patents but then subsequently they reveal they really have 1 that was decomposed into 3 parts so either 1 or 3 but 4 sounds better. 

It can fall apart under analysis but most people ain't got time for that and 4 patents sounds good on a resume, er sorry, CV.

[Mitch Cumsteen 18574]

19 hours ago, Bevo said:

Tell me what you think of University Tech Transfer Offices. Here is my off-the-cuff opinion: Universities spend a lot of money on tech transfer and rightfully so but the transfer offices aren't run like a business. They are run as an extension of universities and politics are heavily involved. 

Abstract

An analysis was made of the financial profitability/loss of technology transfer programs in U.S. universities, hospitals, and research centers for 1995. 

The data from that article are 25 years old. I would imagine tech transfer offices are doing a better job now, merely because the eco system of start ups and funding has evolved a million miles from then. But as far as tech transfer offices go.... sure, politics are heavily involved as it is with just about anything, but you shouldn't necessarily expect a university to run itself like a business, or even part of a university to do so. Their missions are not the same. 

[Bevo 13601]

24 minutes ago, TexasEd said:

So is there another motive to file like a feather or flair for the university, professors and students? 

For sure. A well known, respected faculty member brings tons of money into the university through grants, etc. Suppose that faculty member is an ass and maybe he is chair of the department. Now one of the guys in his lab has an invention - he may force his name onto the patent (which can't be done because it violates patent law), he may threaten the tech transfer office (he has more power than they have)... So you have that dynamic and then remember, patents bring prestige to the university and to the patent holders. And filing for patents in the US isn't so expensive. The real expense comes when designating countries for foreign patents. Those translation costs and patent fees add up quickly. Even if the initial cost is only $5000 per country, designating 10 countries is $50,000.

[TwiceHorn 31535]

1 hour ago, TexasEd said:

So is there another motive to file like a feather or flair for the university, professors and students?  At some level we have people bragging that they have 4 patents but then subsequently they reveal they really have 1 that was decomposed into 3 parts so either 1 or 3 but 4 sounds better. 

It can fall apart under analysis but most people ain't got time for that and 4 patents sounds good on a resume, er sorry, CV.

There is a motive to file patents as "recognition" in every entity I have worked with.  So yes, definitely.

And, over the last 30 years or so, there has been a motivation to "multiply" patent filings, so that, as you say, a single filing morphs into multiple filings that cover different aspects of the same basic invention, or cover it in different ways.  Some of this is "make work" by patent attorneys, and some of it is a desire to increase the number of filings and patents.  IBM has the articulated goal of being the top patentee in the US, so if you represent IBM as an attorney, it's actually a plus to turn a single invention disclosure (an invention) into as many patent filings as possible.

The number of patents, as you note, can be a "feather in the cap," but also may have some practical application.  Electronics companies need to cross-license, or development and sale of commercial products grinds to a halt.  Having an enormous portfolio of patents, with a few significant patents in the mix, can result in a cross-license with money coming to the one with more patents.  It's licensing "by the pound."  IBM has been pretty successful with that.

For important inventions, or those perceived as such (as mentioned above, you can never really know at the time of filing), many patentees will try to create a "patent thicket," with numerous patents covering every little detail of an invention so that imitators have nowhere to turn without being ensnared.

I recently encountered a somewhat unexpected patent thicket around an invention with which you may be familiar in Primos' trigger-operated bipods and tripods.  https://patents.google.com/patent/US8820693B1/en?assignee=primos&oq=primos#relatedApplications

Edited January 28, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[BabaYaga 15320]

Suck a dick Chinese Academy!

[atomheartbevo 89792]

Wrong thread.

Edited February 6, 2022 by atomheartbevo