---
title: "University technology transfer offices"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_technology_transfer_offices"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:26:31.561922+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Structure and organization ==
The structure and organization of TTOs can affect its overall performance and can vary among universities. Since TTOs deal with both academic research and industry, they consist of a diverse set of individuals, including scientists, lawyers, analysts, licensing experts, and business managers. By having individuals (particularly different scientists, engineers, and analysts) with varying sets of expertise in research, TTOs attempt to more effectively assess, protect, and profit from the research developments taking place in  multiple disciplines throughout the university.
TTOs can by classified into three different types: 

internal: existing as an integrated part of the university and controlled by university administration
external: existing as an independent company that does not operate under the control of university administration
mixed: having components of both internal and external TTOs
As of 2012 the "internal" type was most common in the US.
TTOs of different universities can also collaborate between them to grow, thus originating new organizational structures. Such structures are:

Network structure: the existing organizational forms of each TTO are maintained and the single organizations operate together in a virtual manner creating a subset of links between the existing TTOs involved in the consortium
Strong Hub structure: a new central TTO is created and it works for each university involved in the consortium
Light Hub structure: a new central TTO with the functions of a hub is created, but each university involved in the consortium maintains internally some technology transfer activities in a dedicated internal office.

== Strategies ==
TTOs attempt to capitalize on the research developments made at the university by employing strategies focused on providing the university with opportunities for financial gain and increased research impact. A common strategy that TTOs engage in is licensing their inventions, either to an industry partner or back to the university inventor if the inventor started a company (i.e. a university spin-off). Through this approach, TTOs can bring university technologies to market without having to engage in production and distribution themselves. TTOs can also take an equity stake in the spin-off company rather than licensing the technology. Some research has suggested that equity in spin-off companies may provide higher returns than licensing, but this strategy seems to be more common with TTOs that are financially independent from the parent university (i.e. external TTO structure). While these strategies vary greatly among TTOs at different universities, a majority of them employ some combination of licensing and equity stakes, with licensing being a more standard practice.

== International diffusion and TTOs outside the US ==
As many major research universities across the US began to adopt TTOs, institutions outside the US became attracted to the idea of taking control of their commercialization activities as well. Prior to the 2000s, many German-speaking and Scandinavian countries had a policy of "professor's privilege", in which faculty retain the right to control the intellectual property of their inventions. In addition, in recent years many OECD and EU nations have created legislation that emulates Bayh-Dole, in an attempt to increase the commercialization activities and impact of their respective research universities. Denmark was among the first to abolish professor's privilege, followed by Germany, Austria, Norway and Finland between 2000 and 2007. Countries such as  France and the UK, which already had policies in place that grant intellectual property rights to universities during this period, began heavily encouraging and enforcing these institutional ownership rights. As of 2011, most European countries grant universities the rights to the intellectual property of inventions developed by faculty researchers, yet a few countries such as Italy and Sweden still employ professor's privilege. Hence, there has been a marked increase in the commercialization activities of universities and creation of TTOs in Europe.
Several Asian countries such as Japan, China, and India have also shifted towards a Bayh-Dole type legislation, although some countries such as Malaysia have a shared ownership model. Moreover, there has been a general shift towards increased commercialization and the establishment of TTOs across higher education institutions in Asian countries.

== Criticisms ==
Although universities created TTOs with hopes of financial gain, many TTOs have retained losses in their commercialization activities and have not generated significant local economic development. It has been argued that protecting intellectual property and patenting is a costly process, and of all the patents and licenses a university issues, there may be a limited number of inventions that actually yield enough revenue to cover or surpass these costs. Research has shown that larger, more established TTOs are sufficiently profitable, whereas many smaller, more recent TTOs are not, and that an estimated half of TTOs retain losses in their commercialization activities (of those that do not have losses, a majority do no better than to cover their costs). Even the most profitable TTOs only produce revenue that amounts to 1-3% of the total research expenditures at the university. Moreover, less than 1% of licensed technologies actually yield over $1M in revenue. Another criticism of TTOs is its role in the research atmosphere of the university, with many scholars arguing that its presence and purpose of engaging in commercialization activities conflicts with a university's mission of furthering knowledge and objective academic inquiry.
Rebecca Eisenberg and Michael Heller have argued that the Bayh-Dole Act spurred university tech transfer offices to become too aggressive in patenting, creating patent thickets and a tragedy of the anticommons especially in the field of biomedical research.  As of 2012, evidence for such an anticommons effect in the practice of biomedical science was lacking.

== See also ==
Intellectual property policy

== References ==