New IP policy at Missouri S&T leads to increase in industry research

摘要

As many universities have discovered in the last 10 years, companies are getting more sophisticated - and demanding -- about intellectual property (IP) when crafting research partnerships with universities. Like many schools, at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T), the long held policy was that companies sponsored the research, the university owned the IP, and then the university licensed it back to the sponsor. But a policy change in 2013 added another new option. "We were getting a fair amount of pushback, as many universities did," said Keith Strassner, director of technology transfer and economic development at S&T. "So, we changed - or really just refined ~ the policy in 2013 and then started promoting this idea that companies could own the intellectual property. It was really just opening the door and saying, 'OK, under certain conditions we'll assign the company the intellectual property rights," Strassner recalls. "That was a big change for us."