Technology Transfer Made Practical for Today’s Research Institutions
Reduce Your TTO’s Royalty Distribution Workload by 90%
Technology transfer agreements are as unique as the universities and institutions that produce them. They apply to dozens of different types of industries and intellectual property, each with their own requirements and best practices. For tech transfer offices working to commercialize a portfolio of research innovations, managing multiple license agreements and associated royalties can be complicated, time-consuming, and error-prone.
No matter how your institution receives royalties and pays out distributions, MetaComet® can save you time and reduce the stress around royalty management, freeing up your team to focus on business development and technology transfer success.
Calculate and Pay Out Distributions with the Click of a Button
We won’t tell you how to structure your technology transfer agreements—you’ll tell us. Once you enter in all your license agreements, MetaComet®’s suite of royalty management solutions will automate your royalty distribution calculations, reports, and payments to make them efficient, accurate, and stress-free.
All of our tools are designed to integrate easily with your existing tech transfer platform, ERP, or other financial software for simplified accounting, reporting, and payment processing.
Why MetaComet®?
Hundreds of companies and universities rely on MetaComet as their royalty financial software provider because of our:
– Exclusive focus on royalty accounting software.
– Simple, proven onboarding process.
– Transparency and ease of use.
– Sincere dedication to customer success.
– Fixed cost implementation, with no surprises.
– SOC 2 Type II security certification.
– Risk-free 12-month trial period.
→ Ask us how our accounting software can help your institution manage tech transfer royalty distributions.
Frequently Asked Questions About Technology Transfer
What is technology transfer?
Technology transfer (also known as “tech transfer”) is the process by which a university, laboratory, or research institution commercializes and monetizes the work of their faculty, research staff, or other employees. The department responsible for this activity is often called the tech transfer office (TTO). The TTO will evaluate the research, discoveries, or inventions for market potential, and secure the appropriate patents or trademarks. They may then license the intellectual property (or IP) to an existing business, or become involved in creating a new start-up business or joint venture that will license the IP and bring it to market. As a part of these technology license agreements, the TTO will collect royalties, license fees, or other payments from the licensees, and distribute portions of those payments back to the original researchers or inventors.
What are the types of technology transfer?
The intellectual property involved in tech transfer may be an invention, patent, process, or trademark with applications in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, agriculture, food processing, computer software and hardware, energy, transportation, or any other industry that depends on new innovations to drive business, save lives, and/or improve our quality of life.
What is an example of technology transfer?
One significant example of the importance of tech transfer is found in the knowledge sharing that was critical to the development of COVID-19 vaccines. In 2020 and 2021, over 200 tech transfer agreements between universities, pharmaceutical companies, and vaccine manufacturers enabled the rapid global development and distribution of these life-saving vaccines. This unprecedented level of global medical collaboration allowed billions of people around the world to be vaccinated in just a few years.
What are the benefits of tech transfer?
Tech transfer delivers a cascade of benefits to different parties throughout the process:
- Scientists, inventors, and researchers receive remuneration for their work, and an added incentive for research that could have a significant commercial and/or societal value.
- Universities, laboratories and research institutions receive the funding needed to continue to pursue scientific, medical, and technological research and development, as well as education.
- Corporations benefit from extensive and wide-ranging research initiatives, without needing to spend as much time and money building their own research infrastructure.
- Start-up companies are often developed in response to new tech transfer opportunities, inspired by research innovations to build a new business and bring a new product to market.
- University students benefit from participation in sophisticated and impactful research projects led by their professors.
- The general public benefits from the innovations that are brought from the idea stage into commercial applications through the technology transfer process, and from the resulting economic development.
What is a technology transfer agreement?
Numerous types of agreements enter into the tech transfer process.
- License agreements are core to the process of bringing inventions to market. These are the agreements in which the research institution (or licensor) grants permission for a commercial entity (the licensee) to use, adapt, and monetize the invention. In return, the licensee pays fees or percentage-based royalties to the licensor.
- Employment agreements usually cover the terms by which institutions and employee researchers share the revenue earned through any license agreements.
- Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) govern the transfer of research materials between parties, for the purpose of further research.
- A CRADA, or Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, enables federal laboratories to collaborate with other entities (like businesses, universities, or non-profits) on research and development projects.
- Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or confidential disclosure agreements (CDAs) are often applied in advance of a license agreement. The potential licensee may request access to confidential information about the IP in question in order to estimate its value. The NDA or CDA requires them to maintain the confidentiality of such information.
Who receives revenue from a technology transfer agreement?
A tech transfer license agreement will define the fees and royalties to be paid to the licensor (usually the research institution). In turn, the institution, depending on its own policies and agreements, will pay out distributions to various parties that enabled the research, possibly including:
- Inventors
- Research programs
- Departments
TTOs! Are you ready for stress-free royalty distributions?
Are you spending too much time calculating and paying out distributions?
→ Contact us to see how our software saves time and eliminates royalty headaches.