October 2022 – Office of Innovation and Corporate Partnerships

When I mention iEdison to researchers, I am sure their minds wander to what is iEdison. It is NOT a new ‘i’ product from Apple; but, it is named for a cool researcher. iEdison is related to reporting inventions and patents which result from federally sponsored research. In essence, iEdison (interagency Edison) is a tool for reporting the intellectual property (IP) which result from the NSF, NIH, DOE, etc., grants.

When research is funded by a Federal agency, there is an expectation of the research addressing a societal issue. There is a hope that the results of that research will include inventions and patents that can be pursued to continue to address the issue. If inventions resulted from historical research funded by the Federal Government, the Federal Government would own – retain all rights – in the results.

In 1980, the Bayh-Dole Act was passed to allow small businesses and non-profit institutions, such as the University of Oklahoma, to elect to take title to federally funded inventions under certain terms and conditions. There are certain regulatory requirements in which we must abide. The University meets these requirements by following the regulations and reporting resulting IP via iEdison. OTC manages the reporting to iEdison for the University.

iEdison is the online, relational database designed around the reporting requirements of the Bayh-Dole Act and its implementing regulations. It allows recipients of federal research funding to report subject inventions and patents to the federal funding agency that issued the funding award. Several federal agencies use iEdison, so this single online resource lets funding recipients report to many different funding agencies. The system is used by both the funding recipients to report information and documentation into iEdison as well as by the funding agencies to receive and review the information and documentation submitted.

In our office, we term this as federal reporting; but, researchers still have reporting of IP in the annual or final reports. With iEdison, we report and respond to the regulatory requirements. As these are required by regulation – law – we have an ongoing obligation to report accordingly. Just like annual and final reports are required, reporting IP via iEdison is required, as well. Without reporting, future University research may be jeopardized.

I recently saw a headline stating that the research antibodies and reagents market is projected to reach USD 16.1 billion by 2027. My first thought was WOW, that’s a big number. My second thought was WHAT A COINCIDENCE, I just had another inquiry from Pharma requesting a license for a cell line. So here we are with my first contribution to the OICP blog page, how to determine if your research tools might be licensable.

When we think about successfully licensed university innovations, the first thing to come to mind is probably NOT a research reagent. But if the above projection, which is based on growing demand for personalized medicine, structure-based drug design, proteomics and genomics research, is even partially accurate, perhaps we should? It is likely that you have created such reagents, perhaps for a specific experiment or to obtain data for a publication or grant proposal. You may have even tried to find materials from a supplier and ended up making your own because they weren’t available. Obviously not all of these will have commercial potential, and many will not. So how do you know if your research tool may have commercial potential?

I approach this with four questions:

Was it difficult to create?
Would it be useful to others?
Has it been published and have others requested it?
Can it be used in drug development or some other commercial process?

As the creator of these materials, you can certainly share them with fellow researchers under a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) and doing so is integral to the progression of research and is a requirement under some funding agencies. But if you answered yes to any of the above, and especially if you have multiple requests and/or if commercial entities are reaching out to you, that may a good indicator of commercial potential. Isn’t that worth exploring?

A couple of examples of license arrangements for research tools include commercial reagent suppliers and pharmaceutical companies. Suppliers are interested in providing reagents to the research community; novel antibodies, cell lines, chemicals, enzyme’s, plasmids, proteins, media, etc. can be licensed to these vendors and they in turn are granted permission to provide them for specified uses. This model can help relieve investigators from supplying their materials to fellow researchers when the burden becomes excessive. Pharmaceutical companies can look to academia for cell lines and mouse models that are useful in drug discovery and development; they may discover these assets in your publications and published grant applications and may be willing to license them rather than devote time and resources to creating their own.

And this brings me back to my inquiry from Pharma for the cell line and my reason for the blog. Did I mention this cell line is one of our most frequently licensed assets? Did I mention that research tools don’t typically require patent protection in order to be licensed and generate revenue? Did I mention that the revenue received is shared with you, the inventor, per the University IP policy?

So, the next time you create a research tool that you think may have commercial value, please do come see us – it IS worth exploring and we look forward to exploring that possibility with you.

The Office of Innovation and Corporate Partnerships is focused on integrating the university’s efforts in technology commercialization, entrepreneurship, and corporate partnerships for sponsored research and education.

Month: October 2022

What does iEdison mean to my Research?

Does my Research Tool have Commercial Value?