July 1, 2013Newco corralling new IPUCLA is trying a new approach to licensing its IP, using an external 501(c)(3). The plan is stirring up considerable controversy.At the May 15, the UC Regents voted to create an external nonprofit corporation, tentatively called “Newco.” Here are some key excerpts from the board agenda:The primary mission of Newco and its Board will be to: (i) improve UCLA’s rate of invention disclosures per year; (ii) increase UCLA’s volume of patent applications per year; (iii) increase the overall flow of licensing royalties back to UCLA; and (iv) better position UCLA to win large, multi-year ISR contracts. This improved performance will not only benefit UCLA, but the surrounding community and the public at large.In comparison to its peers at other universities, UCLA OIP-ISR has historically underperformed in the areas of technology transfer and ISR. UCLA believes this underperformance has not been caused by a lack of productivity among UCLA faculty or a deficiency in UCLA scholarship, but rather due to deficiencies in the current process of managing IP and ISR at UCLA.Last week, the plan inspired a breathless exposé in a publication I’d never heard of, the East Bay Express. The opening excerpts:June 26, 2013Public Research for Private Gain UC Regents recently approved a new corporate entity that will likely give a group of well-connected businesspeople control over how academic research is used.By Darwin BondGraham In a unanimous vote last month, the Regents of the University of California created a corporate entity that, if spread to all UC campuses as some regents envision, promises to further privatize scientific research produced by taxpayer-funded laboratories. There are so many problems with the article, it’s hard to know where to start. The new plan would change what patents get filed and licensed for the UCLA medical center. It won’t be privatizing the research: the same research will be done, and it would still be licensed to firms.The UC has been licensing IP to businesses for decades. Patents get licensed because it generates money, because it gets the technology into society’s hands, and because (after Bayh-Dole) it’s the law. Without Herb Boyer of UCSF (and Stan Cohen of Stanford) and their famous patent, there would be no recombinant DNA, no gene splicing, no Genentech.The new plan for UCLA will decide differently which patents to prosecute (file) and license. An unpaid external board — the volunteer directors of Newco — will decide which ones to pursue and which ones not to. In the whole pipeline of developing and commercializing university research, the plan only changes the final few steps. (As far as I can tell, it doesn’t change the pricing of licenses nor the allocation of royalties to inventors and places within the university).The exposé suggests that the plan parallels the University of Washington’s “Center for Commerci