Technology Transfer & Incubation

The Council, working with research institutions, technology firms, business incubators, investment professionals, and the legal community is exploring targeted methods to grow the New England economy by enhancing the pipeline of technology commercialization through its Technology Transfer & Incubation Team (TTI). Led by Bill Gelnaw, Managing Partner, and Karen Copenhaver, Partner at Choate, the Team is developing a web-based set of annotations to local university-based technology transfer agreements to highlight thorny issues and recommend ways of resolving them efficiently to help speed the commercialization process across sectors and the region.

The Team hosted a November 2010 meeting with more than a dozen local law and venture capital firms and a subsequent drafting meeting of a dozen Council members and partners, including representatives from state and national technology transfer associations.  Among the issues the Team is currently annotating are: scope of IP rights and follow-up on IP; reserved rights, conflict of interest, indemnification, warranties/background rights; diligence; sub-licensing (approval rights); insurance; publication (confidentiality); control of patent prosecution; assignment of transfer rights; and federal funding impact. The draft will then be submitted to practitioners for comment and feedback that will be considered and incorporated into a final version.

The broader goals of the TTI Team are to:

• Enhance New England’s stature as the world’s preeminent location for innovation and commercialization of new technology
• Grow the New England economy by facilitating the development of new technology enterprise
• Foster a collaborative spirit among universities, colleges, innovators, investment professionals, the legal community and other stakeholders to improve the speed, quality and volume of new technologies transforming into successful New England ventures
• Connect and involve new businesses with the region to foster corporate citizenship
• Encourage entrepreneurial efforts of faculty, students and other innovators which will result in serial entrepreneurship and new business development

For more information, contact Daniella DeChristopher at daniella@mhtc.org.