National Academy of Inventors
By B. Collins
Paul Sanberg is no stranger to commercializing inventions.
As the associate vice president for research and innovation and the director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida, he has some 30 health-related U.S. patents. His co-discovery of a novel antidepressant drug is currently being developed by AstraZeneca.
But many of his patent-holding peers at his university in Tampa and across academia are MIA when it comes to turning intellectual property into profits.
Frustrated by what he sees as the unrealized potential of IP pent up inside universities, Sanberg helped found the National Academy of Inventors.
Launched last January, the NAI hopes to nurture industry research contracts and interaction with companies and organizations.
“The concept of being an inventor and a faculty member isn’t given a lot of credence in academic circles,” he says. “It hasn’t been something that’s been pushed.”
In short, Sanberg believes the NAI can help bring about culture change at universities – admittedly a tall order.
“What we have at universities are walls and silos,” he says, adding that the NAI offers “a way to tear those down.”
He’d like the NAI to nudge professors who have an entrepreneurial bent to do more than publish papers and secure research grants.
“We had about 125 faculty who had patents,” he says. “I was surprised by that figure – I didn’t think there were that many.”
To aid in the outreach and development of academic inventions, the NAI turned to the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, a Cambridge, Mass.-based institute that has a bio-engineering facility on the USF campus.
The nation’s “lifeblood is really based on delivering innovation,” says Len Polizzotto, Draper’s vice president for strategic business development and marketing and one of the charter members of the NAI. “We have to deliver high value. If we don’t, some competitor will.”
In many respects, the NAI initiative leverages tenets of the Bayh-Dole Act, legislation passed in 1980 that enabled universities to retain ownership of the IP they develop using public funds.
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One recent study found that 153 new drugs, vaccines, or in vitro devices had been commercialized from federally funded research since enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act.
Sanberg hopes the National Academy of Inventors can spur more commercialized research and aid in economic development.
Membership to the NAI is open to inventors who hold at least one patent and belong to a university community. Inventors must join through a university chapter.
As of this writing, the national academy had one university on the roster – the University of South Florida. But behind-the-scenes, there was movement as this edition went to press, and Auburn University looked as if it may be the second institution to join.
Visit www.academyofinventors.org
Making the Grade
Universities do more than churn out graduates. They also are engines of commerce.
- More than 6,000 U.S. companies have been formed from university inventions since 1980
- 4,350 new products came on the market as a result of university patent licensing
- 5,000 active university-industry licenses are in effect, mostly with small companies
A study from the Biotechnology Industry Organization shows that university patent licensing on the U.S. economy between 1996 and 2007 resulted in:
- a $187 billion impact on the U.S. gross domestic product
- a $457 billion impact on U.S. gross industrial output
- 279,000 new jobs created in the United States from university inventions
Source: Association of University Technology Managers and the Biotechnology Industry Organization
Fun Fact
A relative of Enzo Ferrari, late founder of the famed Italian sports car manufacturer, developed the Web site for the National Academy of Inventors.
Editor’s note: This article appears in the May 2010 print edition.
