UW-Madison among top license income earners

UW–Madison and its patent management organization, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), rank 11th out of 143 U.S. universities in the amount of royalties and other license income collected on UW–Madison inventions, according to the latest annual survey by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

During 2001, the year of the survey, WARF ranked 5th in the nation in number of new license agreements executed. License income flowed to WARF and the UW–Madison from more than 200 license agreements. Today, the foundation manages more than 650 active licenses – 20 percent of them are with Wisconsin companies.

“Once again these numbers show that the quality of UW–Madison research allows us to generate first-rate intellectual property that is greatly valued by companies,” says Bryan Renk, WARF’s director of patents and licensing. “Not only does this help us do our job better, but it also allows us to return a high dollar amount to the university to support basic research.” WARF gives all the licensing revenues it receives each year to the university to fund further scientific inquiry.

The top five license income earners among universities were Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California system (which includes all 10 UC campuses), Florida State University and Stanford University. The only Midwestern university to break the top 10 was Michigan State University, which placed sixth.

Each year, AUTM collects data on the licensing activities of its constituency in order to track trends and document the public benefit and economic impact of technology transfer. In 2001, AUTM obtained a record response rate to its survey, including participation by 92 percent of the top research institutions across the country.