New Victoria University Programme to offer free Tech IP

New Victoria University Programme to offer free Tech IP to local Industry

Victoria University will offer rights to selected technologies for free in a bid to collaborate better with industry to increase local innovation. The Easy Access IP (EAIP) programme will provide local companies and NGOs with free and simple licenses to commercially develop technology or research developed within the university. Viclink (The Technology transfer and commercialisation office of Victoria University) is launching this programme along with an upgraded web portal to showcase the available technologies at the end of August.

Project champion and ‘Open Innovation Manager’ Bianca Grizhar says this programme complements their existing commercialisation efforts and believes this approach will help the university to work closer with local industry partners to identify and develop more innovative technologies that will have benefits for local communities and the economy. She also anticipates the programme can leverage Wellington’s unique potential as a thriving digital and information technology hub to catalyse growth in this high value strategic growth sector.

Victoria University is a partner of OS//OS Open Source Open Society 2016and Viclink hope to use the conference on 22/23 August to connect with potential partners in the local technology space. The Easy Access IP programme is closely aligned with the work OS//OS is championing and we look forward to having Viclink involved.

Missed Opportunities

Viclink has a great record at developing innovative technology with notable spin-out successes such as Avalia, AuramerBio, Magritek and Boutiq playing a crucial role in benefiting the local economy. However, a large proportion of all university-developed technologies worldwide never make it into production as transfer units such as Viclink often lack capacity to pursue them all. By necessity they must generally focus on opportunities assessed as fitting strategic goals and for which they are well placed in terms of involved staff, funding and partners. This is a missed opportunity on many levels as potentially beneficial innovations for society or local businesses may fall by the wayside and never have the impact they could.

The typical technology transfer and licensing process is often complicated, costly and drawn out involving various stages of funding and patent applications and complex legal transfer agreements. This process can be a barrier preventing valuable partnerships forming as:

· Small companies and start-ups often lack the capital, legal knowledge and experience to negotiate these complexities.

· It is not well suited to development in the fast paced digital sector where speed and flexibility is crucial to success.

· It can prevent students and researchers from continuing to develop their research commercially after they graduate.

Another major barrier is a lack of wider community awareness about potential inventions or technologies in the Universities. Bianca says that in comparison to many nationalities “Kiwis don’t tend to talk about their successes or the cool things they are working on, which means industry and investors are often unaware of potentially game changing solutions being developed right here.” We also traditionally have an insulated academic culture with little community connectivity or collaboration between institutions compared to many overseas settings.

All of this means many opportunities to collaborate are being missed and the economy is suffering as a result.

Removing barriers to collaboration

Universities are important publicly funded institutions making a crucial contribution to creating and disseminating knowledge in our society. It is vital to ensure this knowledge resource remains open and accessible so that it translates into real products and services that benefit the local economy and improve the quality of life of our local communities. EAIP will seek to achieve this by:

Removing barriers to collaboration

· EAIP will offer a selected range of technology or research free of cost and easily searchable on a new online portal.

· It simplifies license terms with one-page standard form transfer agreements making the process more transparent and easier to navigate.

· The lowered costs and risks of this simplified system will make partnerships more accessible to smaller companies, start-ups and NGOs by giving them lower risk opportunities to trial and develop technologies.

· This will support local companies to grow and develop innovative technology applications leading to job creation and strengthening the local economy.

Ensuring ongoing academic access to important research

· Those taking advantage of free transfers must agree to allow the university continued access for research purposes.

Ensuring maximum social and economic impact

· EAIP licensees will be required to demonstrate how they will create value for society and the economy and must report annually on progress toward this.

· If license holders haven’t developed a technology after 3 years, ownership may revert to the University so somebody else can do so.

Forming and fostering mutually beneficial ongoing partnerships

· The transfer agreement will be seen as the start of a partnership between the university and the licensing partners.

· This will open up ongoing opportunities for collaboration and dialogue to collaboratively solve challenges and develop innovative solutions.

Tapping into an established EAIP international network

· Joining this network, which includes Australian Universities such as University of New South Wales will help with operational aspects of implementing it.

· It will also connect local researchers and technologies to international support and opportunities.

· It is hoped that other local institutions will also join to enable more collaboration locally in the future.

OS//OS—building partnerships

Viclink see Wellington’s thriving IT, digital technology and design sector as a key strategic advantage of the local innovation ecosystem. The EAIP programme will initially enable the key schools of Architecture and Design, Engineering and Computer Science to open up their highly valuable research and technology development resources to support local companies in this sector. However, the approach has been relatively unexplored overseas in the digital and design areas so Viclink are entering exciting new territory as they adapt the approach to digital technology and open source projects.

For this reason OS//OS 2016 presents an exciting opportunity to connect academic and practical industry minds through a shared understanding of open source principles and ways of working together. It will also catalyse important conversations around potential areas of research focus that could be beneficial for the development of the tech industry in the future.

Impacts of the approach

The launch of the EAIP programme and the new Viclink technologies portal will increase awareness of the potential to access university-developed technology opportunities and will provide clarity around the required process. This should encourage a more diverse range of local partnerships to develop technologies that positively benefit society. Further developing these partnerships through ongoing dialogue will enable the university to better respond to the needs of local industry and the community in the future.

This new approach will embed Victoria as an integral part of the strategically important local innovation and technology ecosystem and help them become a leading civic university. This will also lead to increased technology innovation and growth and support New Zealand’s ambition of being a global leader in this space.

ENDS

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