07
/ February
2012
In contest between industry and feds, who gets what in technology transfer?
When both federal and industrial funding support a research program, it is appropriate to grant an industrial sponsor the right to receive licenses to subsequent inventions, according to the University of Hawaii Technology Transfer and Economic Development Department. “It is also possible for two separate research projects to contribute to a single invention. If one project is sponsored by industry and one by the federal government, the industrial sponsor can be given rights to the invention.” However, it is not appropriate to grant industry exclusive licenses to “future federally assisted inventions which results from research the company didn’t fund.