UW-Madison improves patent ranking

The University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2005 was the nation’s fifth most productive intellectual property setting among U.S. universities, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) announced.

UW–Madison, with 77 patents awarded in 2005, moved up three notches in the rankings of universities or university systems with the most intellectual property activity. In 2004, UW–Madison ranked eighth with 64 patents.

“The number of patents on technologies emerging from UW–Madison is a direct indicator of the quality of our faculty,” says Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the private nonprofit organization that obtains patents and manages intellectual property on behalf of the university. “That we consistently rank in the top 10 among universities suggests we’re doing something right, that we’re successfully moving ideas from the lab to the marketplace.”

Among the 77 patents awarded to WARF in 2005 is one for a drug to combat the bone-wasting effects of osteoporosis, developed by UW–Madison biochemistry professor Hector DeLuca. Another enhances the effectiveness, speed and image quality of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, an invention by Charles Mistretta, a UW–Madison professor of medical physics and radiology.

Wisconsin also has nearly 100 companies based on patents stemming from UW–Madison research.

Listed ahead of UW–Madison were the 10 campuses of the University of California System, with 390 patents; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with 136 patents; the California Institute of Technology, with 101 patents; and Stanford University and the University of Texas, which tied for fourth with 90 patents each. UW–Madison charted more patents than Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan, the University of Florida, Columbia University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, the schools rounding out the list issued by the PTO.

Patents for inventions of UW–Madison faculty, staff and students are obtained and managed by WARF, the oldest intellectual property organization among U.S. universities. Established in 1925, WARF manages intellectual property in the interest of the university and annually reinvests royalty and licensing income in support of additional research. 1n 2005, WARF provided nearly $70 million in faculty-allocated grants to the UW–Madison campus to support research in many fields.