---
title: "University technology transfer offices"
chunk: 1/2
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"
---

University technology transfer offices (TTOs), or technology licensing offices (TLOs),  are responsible for technology transfer and other aspects of the commercialization of research that takes place in a university. TTOs engage in a variety of commercial activities that are meant to facilitate the process of bringing research developments to market, often acting as a channel between academia and industry. Most major research universities have established TTOs in the past decades in an effort to increase the impact of university research and provide opportunities for financial gain. While TTOs are commonplace, many studies have questioned their financial benefit to the university.

== History ==
The history of technology transfer is intimately linked with the history of the science policy of the United States.  The foundation for modern American science policy laid way out in Vannevar Bush's letter in response to President Roosevelt's query about whether the US should maintain the high level of research funding it had been pouring into the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which had coordinated large private-public partnership research projects as part of the war effort, including the Manhattan Project.  Bush's answer was Science - the Endless Frontier. In that letter, Bush advocated that the US should continue to fund basic research at high levels, arguing that while the US no longer had a geographic frontier, extending the boundaries of science would allow the creation of new technologies, which in turn would spur new industries, create jobs, generate wealth, and maintain US power.  As the US worked out its approach to funding science in the 1950s, Congress decided that the federal government should maintain ownership of patents on inventions funded by the federal government.
Federal research funding drove the growth of the research university.  Many universities in the early 20th century did not engage in patenting and licensing, since the government owned most inventions, and out of fear of interfering with their missions of supporting the growth of knowledge and objective inquiry. Prior to the postwar period, universities relied mostly on external patent management organizations such as the Research Corporation, while few set up their own research foundations that were independent from but affiliated to the university.   Some universities, such as Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin, had active licensing programs of their own.   There was a shift in universities' approaches to technology transfer between 1970 and 1980. During this period, universities began taking commercialization efforts into their own hands and setting up TTOs.
The Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 led many US universities to set up tech transfer offices.  The Act was created to try to spur the stagnant US economy of the 1970s, harking back to Vannevar Bush's vision of the role of federal research funding in the US economy.  The Act decentralized ownership of inventions funded with federal grants, allowing universities that received federal grant funding to maintain ownership of such inventions, obligating them to try to patent and license the inventions to US companies, and requiring universities to share license income with inventors.

== Functions ==
While the broad goal of TTOs is to commercialize university research, they engage in numerous activities that not only bring these developments to market but also encourage and support faculty and students in the entire technology transfer process. Such encouragement may increase the chances of faculty and students creating research developments that can be commercialized. Some of the major functions of TTOs include:

=== Industry partnerships ===
An important task of many TTOs is to create and maintain industry partnerships that may be crucial for collaboration and bringing technologies to market. Some universities such as MIT and Northwestern have separate offices for industry and corporate relations which typically work in conjunction with the TTO of the institution. In this case, TTOs often exploit the relationships developed by the corporate relations office, focusing more specifically on the technology transfer process itself. TTOs often employ two methods when engaging with industry partners: 1) the "pull" method, in which TTOs receive interest from industry partners in bringing specific technologies at the university to market, and 2) the "push" method, in which TTOs actively seek industry partners for this purpose.

=== Intellectual property ===
The Bayh-Dole Act obligated universities to seek patent protection, when appropriate, for inventions to which they elect title; after passage of the Bayh-Dole Act many US universities created intellectual property policies that obligated faculty to assign inventions to the university. Universities typically license the patent to a company that will invest money in developing the invention into a product, which it will then be able to sell at a premium, recouping its investment and making profit before the patent expires.

=== Counseling and incubation for startups ===
TTOs at many universities often provide general business and legal counseling to foster entrepreneurship among faculty and students. By providing resources, funding, and connections to university spin-off companies, TTOs attempt to increase the chances of startup success, which may result in financial gain if the university owns the intellectual property of the invention or has an equity stake in the company. Hence, many TTOs establish business incubators and programs for faculty and students in an attempt to enhance the entrepreneurial atmosphere among researchers at the university. Some examples of such incubators and programs include the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator as well as the Physical Sciences and Engineering Accelerator at Harvard University, and Fab Lab MSI, affiliated with the University of Chicago. Research has suggested that incubators at TTOs have not had a high incidence of technology transfer, despite this being one of the reasons they were established, and may even negatively impact the success of TTOs and technology transfer at the university.