Harvard Business Review Idea of Letting Researchers Choose Licensing Agents Reply by AUTM.

Robert Litan and Lesa Mitchell (HBR) proposed to let academic inventors to freely choose any licensing
agent rather than beeing limited by a specific technology transfer manager to whom the inventor is
assigned.

The autor of the article (AUTM) is challenging the former proposals by making sharp observations upon the
flaws of the article. He also sustains that the assumption made by the other writers are not an appropriate
comparison. It is pointed out the main objective of universities: the pursuit of social benefit.

Dissemination of knowledge is as much as important as commercialization of new technologies,

commercialization is just one aspect of the complex role of universities and research centres.

Litan and Mitchell try to poin out that technology transfer offices are not efficient and in some instances
this is true. ( we can’t say that this is a general rule too).

This proposal would also affect univiersities ability to comply to federal and state laws on non profit entities
and make these organizations loose tax advantages or research grants. (Inventions subject to Bayh-Dole
Act)

The author points out that infefficient technology transfer offices would be eliminated by the university
itself by outsourcing the process to another entity. Here I disagree, usually established power (in this case
of the existing inefficient technology transfer) is hard to be replaced to the resistance of the
workers/managers and decision makers ( plus it is not that easy to relocate personnel in different areas )

The use of outside licensing agents would imply burdensome contracting and time effort that translates in
expenses too.

Technology transfer offices serves also to set standards, to select promising research to the next level and
to be a reference point to the inventors.