By Ed Silverman

COURTESY OF LANCE CLAYTON I fought the Law: Chris Johnson

Chris Johnson fought his tech transfer office and lived to tell the story. The computer science professor at the University of Utah was part of a team that, several years ago, developed a software program that was a platform for designing new medical devices. He felt that making the software accessible to other programmers as an open-source program was the best way to develop the technology on a widespread basis, but the university's tech transfer office (TTO) disagreed, citing the potential commercial value in patenting the software.

"The tech transfer office saw inventions as a way to augment the shrinking university budget and [was] overly aggressive in trying to make money," says Johnson. "For us, the better research opportunity was to make it open-source, but they didn't want to do that. It was all very frustrating. My philosophy was that, yes, I could make money, but I wanted to do it in a way that benefited more than just me, but also my research and my lab, and allow the software to get into real-world situations. Money wasn't the primary motivation. The whole process was so onerous. Since then, in the last year or so, the tech transfer office has been completely reformulated. Thankfully."

Brian Cummings, director of the technology commercialization at the Salt Lake City institution, acknowledges that much faculty frustration existed when he arrived in 2005. To improve the climate, the TTO is now run out of a new office of technology venture development, which is overseen by the dean of the business school, who is also vice president of venture development. And two new boards - one composed of 50 faculty and the other of 50 community business people - review inventions and business prospects. As part of the overhaul, the term sheet has been revised to make negotiations smoother. More emphasis is placed on equity deals for cash-starved startups, thanks to three new funding vehicles created to seed new companies. Licensing, meanwhile, has increased by 35%.

"We've streamlined everything. You don't want ideas to sit. So we've had to come up with ways to create opportunities. Too often people think tech transfer is a mystery, so you have to make things transparent," says Cummings. "It's all about customer service."