Universities' ability to augment their revenues by licensing patents from faculty research has sparked new discussion about the tension between teaching and research responsibilities.
Balancing quality teaching with institutional pressure to publish research is nothing new to the University faculty.
As former University Provost, professor Sol Gittleman is familiar with the process that professors go through to receive patents. He does not think that Tufts professors need this added pressure to encourage them in their research. "We want to encourage them to come up with ideas, but they are ambitious and want to do it themselves as well," he said.
Private patent attorney J. Mark Smith agrees that professors face some pressures. "It used to be 'publish or perish,' now it can also be 'patent or perish,'" he said.
Chemistry professor David Walt acknowledged the notion that research professors like to see their work used in a commercial way. "Faculty tend to have an eye towards the commercialization of their ideas," he said.
Gittleman has noticed the recent surge in research disclosures in American universities. "Over the last 20 years or so, [the patent process] has turned into a whole new enterprise," he said.
According to David Kaplan, professor of biomedical engineering, all faculty members in the University are required to spend 40 percent of their effort on teaching, 40 percent on research, and 20 percent on community service, but added that some professors may spend extra time on research.
Particularly in the sciences, patents are gaining new prominence - and ideas that are successfully patented have become an important source of revenue for universities. "The university sees the economic benefit of patents. It has a business arm too," Smith said.
According to Vice Provost Peggy Newell, the majority of patents come from the life sciences and chemistry departments as well as the School of Engineering.
At Tufts, if a professor submits a research disclosure of patent potential, the worth of the disclosure is determined in a three-person dialogue including the professor who made the disclosure, an administrator and a patent attorney.
If a professor's patent is licensed by a business, any income received is divvied up. 40 percent goes to the investigating professor who originally made the disclosure, 20 percent is given to the professor's department, while 20 percent goes to the professor's school and 20 percent to Tufts' general fund.
Since 1999, Tufts has earned $10,557,822 from the licensing of patents to private businesses, according to a survey by the Association of University Technology Managers. The year-to-year income, however, is unsteady. In 2003, the most recent year that numbers are available, Tufts only earned $738,331 from licensing. In contrast New York University reaped the most of the universities surveyed, earning more than $85 million.
A significant amount of Tufts' recent licensing income has come from a company called Illumina. In 1998, Illumina became interested in basing a business on innovations that Walt had discovered, in the field of gene analysis. These discoveries, which had been previously patented, were eventually licensed to Illumina.
A federal law known as The Bayh-Dole Act requires that if a university makes money from licensing a patented disclosure that was discovered with the help of federal research grants, some of the money must be reinvested in the research.
Newell said, however, that Tufts' research programs do not depend on licensing income.
"The vast majority of our research budget comes from federal grants," she said.
The Association of University Technology Managers survey ranked the patent and research output of 159 colleges and universities.
Tufts ranked 66th in the number of patents applied for, and 71st in number of patents that were issued to the University by the government. Tufts successfully received 13 of 48 patents for which its faculty applied.
"We are in [the rankings] but we are still lacking in entrepreneurial [ventures]," Gittleman said, referring to the fact that Tufts has only had four start-up companies based on patented products since 1999, the most recent one having opened in 2001. MIT, on the other hand, helped form 15 start-up companies in 2003 alone.
The University's rankings are relatively low when compared to those of neighboring Harvard and MIT. Harvard was granted 59 patents, ranking ninth, while MIT came in third with 152 patents. Dartmouth College, like Tufts, was granted 13 patents.
David Kaplan, with the help of senior Jia Huang and graduate student Cheryl Wong, has recently submitted a research disclosure, involving bio-material and tissue engineering, to the University.
Both Green and Kaplan see extensive benefits in patenting through Tufts. "It's important to be innovative," said Green. "We want to maximize our use to community, and our commercial revenue."
Kaplan said that research disclosures eventually lead to new technologies and benefit the university, the faculty and the students.
Wong agreed. "As a grad student who just wants to learn certain techniques and develop from them, this process is very rewarding for me," she said.
