Technology Transfer

Technology Transfer Resources at K-State

• Commercialization Leadership Council (CLC)

  The Commercialization Leadership Council (CLC) facilitates commercialization activities involving university intellectual property, infrastructure, personnel, and/or other university resources. Its mission is providing leadership to enhance communication, coordination, and leveraging of university, community, and other external assets. In addition, the CLC has established university procedures for creating appropriate affiliated not-for-profit and for-profit entities, which provide a return on investment to the university.

• Kansas State University Research Foundation (KSURF)

  Kansas State University has an active program to facilitate technology licensing and transfer (commercialization) of intellectual property developed by University faculty. This process is facilitated through a partnership between Kansas State University Research Foundation (KSURF) and the National Institute for Strategic Acquisition and Commercialization (NISTAC). KSURF has the responsibility for managing the intellectual property portfolio of the University with NISTAC serving as KSURF's commercialization agent. NISTAC is a not-for-profit joint venture between the State of Kansas, Kansas State University and the City of Manhattan, Kansas.

• National Institute for Strategic Technology Acquisition and Commercialization (NISTAC)

  NISTAC is a K-State affiliate responsible for licensing K-State and NISTAC patents, as well as supporting university spin-out companies and services. NISTAC's mission is to create and sustain a formal network for supporting technology advancement, technology transfer, education, and scientific research. The objective is to help strengthen regional economies by facilitating the commercialization of new technologies through the promotion of related research and education.

University Technology Transfer Offices

Nearly any research university will have a Tech Transfer Office with a listing of available technologies. To date, these patents have not been pulled together to enable you to search all the sites at once.

• K-State. K-State's Technology Transfer Office
• AUTM.

  This site provides links to Non-profit (including university), Commercial, and Government technology transfer offices. The Association of University Technology Managers is a nonprofit professional association with membership of more than 3,600 intellectual property managers and business executives from 45 countries. The association’s mission is to advance the field of technology transfer, and enhance our ability to bring academic and nonprofit research to people around the world.

Information Gathering and Technology Brokering Organizations

• Birchbob

  Birchbob is a technology marketing agent which focuses on creating productive research and development alliances, marketing innovation, and licensing.

• NextTechs Technologies

  NextTechs intermediates corporate direct investment capital the same way VCs intermediate their Limited Partner's investment capital. There is one major difference however. NextTechs' corporate investor base takes their involvement one step further by entering into additional value generating relationships that seriously reduce technology development risk.

• Techquisition

  Techquisition is a free online community of technology buyers and sellers sponsored by NIH Office of Technology Transfer.

• UTEK

  UTEK® is a specialty finance company focused on technology transfer. They enable companies of all sizes to acquire innovative technologies from universities and research laboratories worldwide. Their unique U2B® process enables publicly traded firms in a wide range of industries to rapidly acquire licenses to university discoveries in exchange for their equity securities. Since its inception, UTEK has completed in excess of 85 technology transfers and currently owns stakes in approximately 60 publicly traded companies.

• UVentures

  UVentures.com, is a division of UTEK Corporation, and serves to connect those seeking cutting-edge physical science technologies with the leading universities and research institutions that are developing these innovations.

• Yet2Com

  Founded in 1999, yet2.com is focused on bringing buyers and sellers of technologies together so that all parties maximize the return on their investments. Whether you are working with a team of our licensing experts or using the virtual technology marketplace, yet2.com offers companies and individuals the tools and expertise to acquire, sell, license, and leverage some of the world's most valuable intellectual assets.

Technology Development

Technology Development at K-State

The development of technology at K-State occurs across campus within research labs, centers and institutes but two organizations, AMI and BIVAP are designed specifically to facilitate the development and transfer of technology developed at the University.

• Advanced Manufacturing Institute (AMI)

  The Advanced Manufacturing Institute is a Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation Center of Excellence that provides an array of resources to advance technologies, people and companies through collaborative engineering and business partnerships. With a full-service product and process development center equipped with cutting-edge manufacturing hardware and software, AMI utilizes its research expertise to develop and transfer new technologies and provide technical assistance.

• K-State's Bioprocessing and Industrial Value-Added Program (BIVAP)

  BIVAP's mission is to support development of technology that utilizes agricultural resources from Kansas to encourage commercialization of these technologies and enhance rural development through application of these technologies.

Other Technology Development Resources

• The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation (KTEC)

  The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation (KTEC) is a private/public partnership established by the state of Kansas to promote technology based economic development. Through support of strategic research and development at our Centers of Excellence, through intense hands-on business assistance at our incubators, and through our equity investments in early-stage companies, KTEC serves as an invaluable partner to companies that bring economic growth to Kansas.

• Kansas Department of Commerce

  Looking to take your business to the next level? The Kansas Department of Commerce offers a variety of options to help you expand your business, ranging from direct financial assistance to technical and educational support. The Department also helps entrepreneurs meet licensing requirements, works with clients to identify incentives appropriate for business expansion, and helps assess communities from a business perspective.

• MAMTC

  MAMTC provides manufacturing expertise to companies throughout Kansas to improve productivity, profitability and overall business performance.

Patents

K-State Patents

• Access to Available K-State and NISTAC Patents
• Access to K-State Patents Only

Corporate Patent Sites

• IBM, Intellectual Property and Licensing

  In 2005, IBM received 2,974 U.S. patents from the USPTO. This is the thirteenth consecutive year that IBM has received more US patents than any other company in the world. In addition to delivering these innovations through its products and services, IBM maintains active patent and technology licensing programs.

• AUTM

  This site provides links to Non-profit (including university), Commercial, and Government technology transfer offices. The Association of University Technology Managers is a nonprofit professional association with membership of more than 3,600 intellectual property managers and business executives from 45 countries. The association’s mission is to advance the field of technology transfer, and enhance our ability to bring academic and nonprofit research to people around the world.

Country Patent Databases

• U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)

  Full-text, searchable database for U.S. patents from 1976. Patents from 1790 through 1975 are searchable only by issue date, patent number, and current US Classification.

• European Patent Office (EPO)
  
• Europe's Network of Patent Databases
• Japan Patent Office (JPO)
• Canadian Patents Database
• Australian Patents Database

Federal Patent Resources

Most Federal labs have intellectual property (IP) that they are willing to license to the private sector. Oftentimes, the IP has been patented and the labs have produced summaries they post on their websites. A potential licensee can scan the website postings, find items of potential interest and contact the technology transfer officers of the lab to start a process of in-depth investigation that can result in acquiring legal rights to the IP. It is important to note that the labs may have far more accessible expertise, capabilities and IP than are represented by the patents. A potential licensee should view the listed patents as large hints about treasures that may lie beyond. The additional IP may be discovered through conversations with the technology transfer agents and scientists at the labs.

• USDA Agricultural Research Service Patents by Subject

  This site is the central point of reference for all 100 labs belonging to the USDA's Agricultural Research Service.

• Department of Defense

  DoD TechMatch is a web-based portal designed to provide industry and academia a Department of Defense-sponsored solution to find Research & Development Opportunities, Licensable Patents, and information on approximately 120 DoD Labs located across the United States. Registered users will receive a daily e-mail taking them to their matching R&D opportunities from FedBizOpps, Grants.gov, and SBIR/STTR solicitations; Calendar events; and Licensable Patents relevant to your business.

• EPA Labs

  This site is designed to provide you with:

  • A one stop shop for entering into innovative technology partnerships with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
  • Access to EPA patented technologies to increase licensing and partnership opportunities between non-federal entities and EPA laboratories.
  • Information on EPA research and research opportunities.
  • Third-party independent analyses of the commercial potential of the technologies. Technologies assessed to have high market potential can be viewed within Featured Patents.
• AUTM

  This site provides links to Non-profit (including university), Commercial, and Government technology transfer offices. The Association of University Technology Managers is a nonprofit professional association with membership of more than 3,600 intellectual property managers and business executives from 45 countries. The association’s mission is to advance the field of technology transfer, and enhance our ability to bring academic and nonprofit research to people around the world.

Fee-Based Patent Resources

These sites often charge for use or membership, providing you with access to improved searching capabilities, enhanced display capabilities, or better data management systems.

• Delphion

  Thomson Delphion Intellectual Property Network offers access to information for all U.S. Patents granted since 1971. Full image copies of any of 2.1 million U.S. patents issued since 1974 can be obtained. European Patents and published International Patent Applications are also available.

• Community of Science (COS)

  Universities, corporations, societies, private institutions, government agencies and individual researchers all depend on COS web-based products and services to find funding, promote their work, identify experts, manage resources, and collaborate with colleagues.

• PIPRA: Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture

  PIPRA is an initiative by universities, foundations and non-profit research institutions to make agricultural technologies more easily available for development and distribution of subsistence crops for humanitarian purposes in the developing world and specialty crops in the developed world. (K-State is a member.)

• Patent Lens

  The Patent Lens resource comprises a fully text-searchable patents database, containing over 5,500,000 patents and patent applications from the PCT, US, and EPO databases. They started with the life sciences collections from these jurisdictions and have recently added all patent classifications from the US applications and granted patents, and are in the process of expanding to all classifications in the EPO and PCT collections.

General/Free Patent Resources

• PatentStorm

  PatentStorm offers patents from the US Patent Office, including full-text patent search. PatentStorm is a sister company of Storming Media, a Washington, DC-based company that makes US federal government information more accessible.

• Freepatentsonline

  The FreePatentsOnline search engine is one of the most powerful, fastest and easiest patent search engines on the web. This search allows advanced search techniques such as word stemming, proximity searching relevancy ranking and search term weighing to help you find exactly what you are looking for. Latent semantic searching is also available, and account features let you organize, annotate and share documents, along with other helpful workflow features.

• Google Patent Search

  With Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you.