ľֱ Office of Research is responsible for the evaluation, protection, and efficient transfer of intellectual property (IP) to the marketplace. The Director of External Collaboration at the ľֱ Office of Research serves as an educational and management resource for ľֱ's IP.
If you are a company seeking research or technology licenses, we welcome your interest in ľֱ and the innovative tools produced by our investigators. Our solutions can help you gain competitive advantages—but due to the early stages of their development, these technologies generally require additional investment and development. The Office of Research manages the University's intellectual property from disclosure to licensing, and we manage the transfer of University research to business and industry partners.
Vacant
Director of Contracts and Commercialization
otmc@uno.edu
We are eager to promote entrepreneurship and to foster economic development. As a result, technologies may be licensed both to established companies and to start-ups. When a technology presents an opportunity for start-ups, we happily work with newly formed or already-established start-ups.
For more information about our available technologies and research capabilities, we encourage you to contact the Director of External Collaboration. Only by knowing your specific needs are we able to match you with our various resources (faculty expertise, new technologies, or unique research resources).
If you identify a promising technology and would like more detailed information, please request our standard non-disclosure agreement (NDA), fill-in the relevant information, and then fax or email us the completed, partially signed agreement for our countersignature. Once the NDA is in place, we'll be able to describe the technology in greater detail.
ľֱ can often assist companies with product development, and we are amenable to collaborative arrangements such as company-sponsored research or arranging access to our unique research facilities and equipment.
Contact the Director of External Collaboration for more information.
As ľֱ researchers and employees, your discoveries may be significant to academia, the business community, and the greater public. Much of the knowledge you develop is disseminated through publications and papers. However, before any public disclosure of your idea or invention is made, ľֱ must protect it and its commercial value. Otherwise, any income from your idea or invention cannot be assured.
Please do not hesitate to contact the Director of External Collaboration if you have any questions.
The researcher (faculty, staff, or student) who made a creative contribution to at least one of the issued claims in a patent created an invention. Someone who assisted the inventor, such as a lab technician or student who ran tests directed by the inventor, did not create an invention. Inventorship is defined under patent law. Sometimes, inventorship cannot be determined until the patent is issued—claims may change during prosecution (if, for example, certain claims get disallowed).
Disclosing your inventions and discoveries is a requirement of being a employee of ľֱ. If your research was funded in whole or in part by a federal, state, or industrial grant/contract, you are required to file a Technology Disclosure of a possible invention under terms of the grant. The University in turn, is required to notify the sponsor. For federal grants, the University must report the invention to the sponsoring agency within 60 days and actively work to commercialize the technology. This is to meet the requirement that federally funded inventions should be licensed for commercial development. If the invention has commercial value, not disclosing the invention can lead to loss of royalty income that is shared by the institution with the inventor(s) according to its policies.
You should file the Technology Disclosure Form as soon as you realize your research has uncovered something new and useful—two of the key elements for patentability. While the experimental work need not be complete, a clear and complete written description is required. A working model is not required. Drawings and a written description are sufficient.
Researchers are generally free to publish or make public disclosures of their findings at any time, in any media of their choice, limited only by other previously entered contractual obligations. However, a public disclosure can destroy most non-U.S. patent rights immediately if the patent application has not already been filed. U.S. rights are lost if the patent application is not filed within twelve months of the publication or presentation or someone else files the patent application first. In most cases, filing a U.S. patent application before the first publication or presentation will temporarily preserve the right to file outside the U.S. It is best to consult with the Director for External Collaboration before any publication is submitted, if there might be a possible valuable invention being disclosed in it.
No, especially for those employees whose departments were directly or indirectly involved in licensing the technology. However, the inventor(s) or creator(s) of intellectual property licensed to a start-up company may be given shares in the start-up company as part of their share of the Royalty Income the University receives.
There is a procedure for the university to contract with a member of the faculty, research staff, or an employee or where a member of their family has an financial interest in the company. This contracting is possible under specified circumstances.
References:
Laboratory notebooks are the means for keeping a permanent record of the details of an individual’s day-to-day research and development work in the laboratory or office. They provide a basic reference which the individual and others can refer to a later date; legal evidence with respect to the materials recorded, such as conception of an invention and the date thereof or date of reduction to practice and test results; in some instances are required for compliance with the provisions in many grant and contractual arrangements.
Select a notebook with bound and numbered pages. This is extremely important. Loose-leaf notebooks and tablets with tear-out pages are not to be used. Each researcher should have a separate notebook. Notebooks should not be shared.
The ľֱ Bookstore can supply you with a high-quality, bound book entitled Laboratory Notebook. It is manufactured by Boorum & Pease Company (Esselte), order number L21150R. It contains a pre-printed version of these instructions as well as other desirable user aids such as signature and witness lines on every page. This notebook is highly recommended.
If a less expensive notebook is required, the ľֱ Bookstore can supply you with one entitled Computation Notebook. It is manufactured by Avery Dennison, order number 43-648. A label can be obtained to designate this to be a Laboratory Notebook and to record the necessary owner information. If the reader uses this book, a copy of these written procedures should be taped to the inside of the front cover for future reference. One drawback to this book is that it is quadrille printed rather than lined. And the book does not include pre-printed signature and date line reminders on each page. But it is bound and page numbered.
