"Universities across the country are involved in licensing programs like this and are larger or smaller, depending on the type of research," Brinton says. "Stanford has two licenses which bring in over $15 million each," including a patented technique for gene splicing which is used by molecular biologists across the country.

Harvard's OTTL not only oversees the patent creation process, which can take anywhere from two to seven years, but stays in close contact with the companies which hold the patent licenses, Brinton says.

"We like to keep in touch, see how they're doing," she says.

The OTTL follows the company's use of the technique or product, and makes sure the royalties the company is paying are correct, according to Brinton.

Patent Licensing

Licensing a patent to a company can be a complex legal process. While he was provost, Leverett Professor of Political Economy Jerry R. Green headed the Committee for Science Policy, which looked at the relationship between the for-profit world and research funding.

The committee examined ways in which the University accepts funding from for-profit companies and develops "safeguards to protect academic integrity," Green says.

For instance, if a graduate student get a patent which is then licensed to a company, that student holds exclusive rights to continue working on that invention as long as he or she remains in the academic world, Green says.

According to the rules developed by Green's committee, the student would lose those rights if he or she went to work for a competitor to the license-holding firm, the former provost says.

To license a patent to a company, the University must first decide if an invention is patentable and then begin the patenting process before publishing information about the invention, Green says. According to Green, any public information is no longer patentable.

Because maintaining a patent can be expensive, before beginning the patenting process the University also needs to gather a list of companies interested in licensing the invention, he says.