Watch the Regents Special Committee on Innovation Transfer & Entrepreneurship: 2-17-2022

We are again catching up with an off-cycle meeting of the Regents, this time the Special Committee on Innovation Transfer & Entrepreneurship: 2-17-2022. There were no public comments at this session, probably because the Health Services Committee, which often meets off-cycle, had its public comments the day before. The Special Committee is focused on commercialization of intellectual property generated at UC. 

There was much discussion of the existing patent tracking system which is being devolved to the campus level. And much discussion of complicated legal and financial arrangements for having UC "participate" in an equity sense in start-up companies' use of UC intellectual property. It seems to be assumed that it is better for UC to participate rather than simply cash out valuable IT. It might be useful to have some articulate why it is better as a general rule. Obviously, you can always tell success stories. But presumably there are failures, too. There were some hints in the discussion that start-ups generally don't have the cash, or access to the cash, to buy IT but can offer participation. Still, it wouldn't hurt to look at this issue more critically.

You can see the meeting at https://archive.org/details/regents-special-committee-on-innovation-transfer-and-entrepreneurship-2-17-22.