Patent Leather

Last year Harvard collected more than $13 million in royalties from patents on technology developed at the University, part of a national trend toward increased innovation at national research universities.

Across the United States, royalties paid to research universities for inventions increased by 33 percent in 1997, according to the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

Harvard last year accounted for $13.4 million of a total $446 million in royalties received nationally according to AUTM, finishing ninth on the group's list behind schools including the University of California, Columbia and Stanford Universities.

Harvard issued 39 patents, ranking thirteenth on the list.

The University implemented a royalty sharing policy last August that gives 15 percent of royalties to the University as a whole and 20 percent to the Dean of the individual inventor's school. The inventor gets 35 percent of the first 50,000 in royalties and 25 percent after that, with the remainder going to his or her department.

According to Daniel E. Massing, who chaired the study, his organization has documented a steady rise in royalty income to research universities, driven in part by changes in royalty distribution rules across the country.

"This supports more research", Massing said. "It sends more money back to campus."

As a result, even more innovation takes place. Massing said patent licensing is a growing source of income for research universities. The passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 underlies this development. The act allows universities to patent inventions resulting from research that receives federal support.

But while the trend toward increasing inventions generated by universities has been underway for some time, the effects only slowly come to fruition, according to Massing.

He likened a university's patent portfolio to "fine wines," saying that it takes time for new inventions to yield dividends.

"More institutions are becoming involved," Massing said, adding that of the universities in this year's survey, 54 percent had been licensing patents for 10 years or less.

Inventions in biological science outweighed those in the physical sciences by more than two to one. That ratio seems to be holding steady, according to Massing.

Biological inventions primarily included drugs, medical and surgical devices and gene therapies.

Massing said that a small group of institutions contributed most of the royalties in physical sciences, principally due to innovations in information technology.