Schools Invent Ways To Make Money

They’ve all seemed like ideas whose time had come.

At Washington State University, researchers have patented apricot and cherry trees, a better brand of “putter grass” for golf courses and a “bone cage” to help fuse broken bones.

Eight miles away at the University of Idaho, there’s a method of using bacteria to clean up pesticide spills and ultra-fast computer technology for detecting electronic transmission errors.

“Very often, you get patents that are years ahead of industry,” said Larry Bonar, UI’s director of technology licensing and head of the school’s Idaho Research Foundation.

While faculty inventions are collectively worth more than $300 million to U.S. universities and colleges, the local land grant universities have yet to create the industrial mecca that Washington State University has wistfully called the Palouse Empire Research Corridor.

It’s one thing to do the research that both schools pride themselves in, but it is an entirely different thing to clear the hurdles of raising capital, clearing regulations and bringing a widget to market.

Sometimes an idea is too far ahead of its time and industry just won’t touch it.

“Development is a real problem,” said Larry Simonsmeier, president of the WSU Research Foundation, “and we haven’t had the resources to do that.”

WSU took in $167,750 in royalties from just a few of its 60 patents in 1993. UI, which has 39 patents, received about $190,000 in royalties last year.

Nationwide, revenue from patents and inventions is skyrocketing at universities and colleges, which are searching for ways to raise money at the same time private industry is cutting back on research and development. Schools made 40 percent more from royalties in 1993 than they did the previous year. Harvard alone went from $24,000 in patent royalties in 1980 to $5.4 million in 1994.

“Companies are definitely looking at universities as a source of product ideas because they’re cutting back on R&D,” said Joyce Brinton, director of the Office for Technology and Trademark Licensing at Harvard and president Association of University Technology Managers. “And, yeah, the fact that there’s going to be some income from this is definitely a plus.”

But it’s not always easy.

Scott Adams, president of the Pullman-based VMRD Inc. short for Veterinary Medical Research and Development - knows first-hand how hard it can be to bring university research to the marketplace.

With a line of monoclonal antibodies developed at WSU to detect specific viruses, Adams and a staff of 11 employees are filling orders around the world from a warren of old classrooms and a nurse’s office in the former Gladish School.

But Adams figures it took about six years to go from simply talking about starting the business to acquiring a license to use WSU property. He also built the company a piece at a time with one Small Business Administration loan and initial investments of $2,000 each by him and a partner.

“It’s easy to say it’s wonderful and it’s easy to say it’s going to do great things,” he said. “But it’s very difficult to turn into something a consumer will want to buy. It’s really got to perform.”

The business now has revenues in the upper six figures - Adams won’t specify how much - but only about one-sixth of that is based specifically on WSU intellectual property. For all that, WSU last year received $11,775 in royalty payments from VMRD.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

MEMO: This is a sidebar that appeared with the story: Most money Associated Press Universities that collect the most from inventions resulting from research, based on 1993 royalty revenue: Universities of California: $45.4 million Stanford: $31.2 million Columbia: $21 million University of Wisconsin: $15.8 million University of Washington: $14.8 million Michigan State: $14.2 million Iowa State: $11.6 million Massachusetts Institute of Technology: $5.8 million University of Florida: $5.7 million Harvard: $5.4 million Source: The Association of University Technology Managers.