Peru: you'll never see more species! - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell ...

posal is passed on to the corporation's
headquarters and to Cornell's own administrative
staff, where the legal details
of the agreement are worked out.
Barker emphasizes that the university
is not involved in designing programs for
its researchers. "Cornell," he says,
"should very properly resist functioning
in that corporate sense except [after] the
thrust and the concept is developed by
those who will actually be involved with
the program. Other institutions have
tried to work it the other way around
and I would absolutely resist that at Cornell."
He says, for example, that the university's
new biotechnology program was
conceived by a group of faculty members
and ultimately voted upon by the
entire faculty, and that the currently
proposed "supercomputer" and Theory
Patents
The university's patent policy has been
updated in recent years to keep in step
with new federal laws and in hopes of
bringing Cornell additional income from
ideas developed by its scientists.
Patentable ideas developed on campus
are assigned to the Cornell Research
Foundation, Inc. (CRF), a quasi-independent
subsidiary of the university,
which secures the patents and attempts
to license the inventions to private companies
for marketing. The university's
vice president for research, Prof. Robert
Barker, serves as president of CRF. Income,
after expenses, is shared between
the inventor and the university on a sliding
scale: the inventor's income can
range from 50 per cent of the first
$10,000 down to 15 per cent of earnings
over $100,000. The university's share
goes to the inventor's college, usually to
be spent on more research.
Until recently, Cornell's biggest seller
was the process for making honey butter,
developed by Prof. E.J. Dyce, PhD
'31, entomology, in 1931. Lately, the
most profitable inventions have come
out of the College of Veterinary Medicine,
including a vaccine against canine
parvovirus, and a test procedure for
equine infectious anemia developed
under funding by the New York State
Racing Association. Veterinary products
28 CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS
Center ideas are now going through the
same process of discussion.
"We can help," he says, "pull out of
the community those ideas that the community
wants to develop." The resultant
research proposal then involves shared
responsibility between faculty members
and members of the staff of the vice
president for research to take out and
market to possible corporate sponsors.
Cornell is becoming more aggressive
in marketing its research talent to private
industry. To many, this seems an inevitable
result of changing times—not only
a way to survive, but even a necessary
step to serve the community outside the
ivied walls. The trick, it seems, is to
build a relationship with industry without
compromising the underlying nature
of Cornell.
are much easier to bring to market than
medicines for human beings, because
federal testing requirements are less
stringent.
At present there are high hopes for a
computerized Chinese text writer
("High-Tech Linguistics,'' October
1983 News), a method of cloning rare
orchids, a simple method for controlling
powdery mildew on greenhouse plants,
and a realistic Concord grape flavoring.
In the thirty years since CRF was established,
a total of $5.6 million in royalties
has been earned, but about $2 million
of that has come in over the last two
years. It has become much easier to market
faculty members' inventions since
the Government Patent Policy Act of
1980. This law allows universities to seek
patents in their own names on ideas developed
with federal funding, and to
grant exclusive licenses on such patents.
In January 1983, Cornell adopted a
policy permitting exclusive licensing. According
to Barker, this policy is the best
way to carry out the university's responsibility
to make knowledge available to
society. It's not worthwhile for a company
to make the investment needed to
bring an idea to market, he explains, if
someone else could offer the same product.
"We did the experiment on the com-
munal sharing of the communal property
of basic information, and it doesn't
work in our society," he says. The new
law allows exclusive rights to last only
for a limited period, usually five years
from the date of first commercial sale or
eight years from the date of granting the
license. The university also retains
"march-in rights," which allow it to reclaim
an invention that's not exploited.
When an invention results from research
financed by a private industry,
ownership of the patent will depend on
the terms of the research contract.
Again, Cornell tries to retain such rights
wherever possible, sometimes granting
the funder first refusal on licensing.
The actual work of securing patents
and marketing is done by the Patents
and Licensing Office, a division of CRF
directed by H. Walter Haeussler.
According to Haeussler, his office will
be "taking a higher profile" in the future,
going out to the university community
to look for patentable ideas, rather
than waiting for inventors to come in
with them. With the federal redefinition
of patent policy, he says, the university
saw the advantages of ownership; all
new and current employes are being
asked to sign an agreement acknowledging
that right.
Haeussler also hopes to become more
aggressive in marketing, with CRF perhaps
taking a role in the development of
an invention from a "laboratory curiosity"
into a marketable product.
He believes a lot of inventions are being
given away. "Last year only sixty invention
disclosures came through this
office," he says. "That can't begin to
scratch the surface of the number of inventions
made at this university." —WS
Alumni contribution of patents to the
university is discussed in the Class of
1922 column in this issue.
Funding
At the same time the nation's universities
push for more funds for research
from private industry, they are seeking
to clarify and improve their funding relations
with the federal government.
Dale Cor son, president emeritus of Cornell,
is the first chairman of a group un-