| St George's Enterprise Centre | London Technology Network | Innvation Relay Centre | Regional Development & DTI/OST Funding |
Working With Industry: Research Oppotunities
Providing Help for the Entrepreneur
Good Practices in Knowledge Transfer
Light Reading For the Entrepeneurial Minded
"Universities frequently use 'spinout companies' to develop their intellectual property (IP). 'Spinout companies' help reward those who develop and apply their ideas across a wide range of disciplines. On the 2 December 2004 the Chancellor announced a measure in his pre Budget Report" for press release or see Inland Revinue Draft Clauses and Explanatory Notes
Protecting your Intellectual property
26th April 2007 was World Intellectual Property Day IPO celebrated by releasing some additional information on the theme is "Encouraging Creativity"
Opportunities for Commercial Funding
London Technology Network (LTN)
Other LTN hosted events coming up will be mirrored here and are available on the LTN EVENTS web site
London Enterprise Europe Network Database (Hosted by LTN)
Enterprise Europe Network is a trans-European network of more than 500 business support centres, spanning 40 countries. LTN is part of two regional hubs providing support to London and South-East based companies, and helps SMEs to identify their technology needs and find a suitable technology partner in Europe.
The London Development Agency (LDA); aims to address the issues that prevent London’s firms performing as efficiently and effectively as possible and identify areas that justify public sector intervention.
In order to support London’s businesses LDA aim to:
What does the researcher gain from a KTP. A government grant, plus the contribution from the company partner, fully covers a Research Organisation's costs of participating in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership; the grant also includes a significant contribution to overhead costs.
For each graduate (known as a KTP Associate) engaged for two years on a Programme, no matter what the size of the company, the total funding available is around £94,000 in most cases and almost always in excess of £84,000.It achieves this by:
- facilitating the transfer of technology and the spread of technical and management skills, and encouraging industrial investment in training, research and development
- providing industry-based training, supervised jointly by academic and industrialstaff, for young graduates intending to pursue careers in industry
- enhancing the levels of academic research and training relevant to business by stimulating collaborative research and development projects and forging lasting partnerships between academia and business.
What do NESTA offer? A brilliant idea is a long way from a good business. Our funding is flexible because we recognise that different projects have different needs. For many awardees access to professional support and expertise is as important as funding. Often they find that the business aspects increase in importance as the early technical hurdles are overcome. The guidance offered by our project champions, most of whom have extensive experience of business at very senior levels, together with the support available from the NESTA team, can often make a major difference in turning a great idea into a successful one.
Research Council Funds Available to Demonstrate the Commercial Potential of Ideas
BBSRC have announced a new pathfinder scheme enabling potential follow-on funding applicants to secure small amounts of funding to carry out preliminary commercial activities. Please be aware that the awards have to build on recent or existing BBSRC funding. These activities will help to: Develop a clearer understanding of the commercial potential of the outputs of a research grant Assist with the development of a full follow-on funding application This is an open call. For more information visit http://www.enterprise.sgul.ac.uk/internal/opp_industry.htm and
The Royal Society August 2006
News
- 8th Oct 2008 Rt. Hon. John Denham, Secretary of State for the Dept. for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DUIS) announced the publication of the new Lambert Tool-Kit for Collaborative Research. see the web site and up dated Lambert tool-kit including the five model agreements these first appeared in 2003 following the Lambert review
- June 2008 The European Commision published a Green Paper on the ERA, a key building block of the Community's "knoledge Based Society", "The European Research Area: New Perspectives" the paper deals with asperations for the ERA if europe is to compete with the trend in globalisation of Science and Technology (see http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/progress-on-debate/expert-groups-analyses_en.html)
The paper focuses 6 main areas of need:
- "Adequate flow of competent researchers, with high levels of mobility between institutions, disciplines, sectors & countries"
- "World class research infrastructures, integrated, networked & accessible to research teams from across Europe & the world, notably thanks to new generations of electronic communication infrastructures"
- "Excellent research institutions, engaged in effective public-private co-operation and partnerships, forming the core of research and innovation clusters including virtual research communities. Such clusters & communities would be mostly specialised in interdisciplinary areas and would attract a critical mass of human & financial resources"
- "Effective knowledge-sharing notably between public research & industry, as well as with the public at large"
- "Well-coordinated research programmes & priorities, including significant jointlyprogrammed public research investment at European level with common priorities, coordinated implementation & joint evaluation"
- Opening the European Research Area to the world with special emphasis on neighbouring countries & a strong commitment to addressing global challenges with Europe's partners.
- 14th March 2008 The DUIS on behalf of the Government launched a White Paper on Science and Innovation (to see the press release)
- 29th Jan 2008 St George’s, University of London (SGUL) has recently become part of the Research Tools London (RTL) consortium funded by The London Development Agency (LDA). RTL aims to aid London universities in the commercialisation of Research Tools by pooling tools from institutions across London.
Any revenue generated will be shared between researchers and St George’s, University of London as noted in Financial Regulations. SGUL research staff will not be required to negotiate with potential licensees or spend time working on the commercial agreements. This will be taken care of by SGUL Centre for Enterprise & Innovation and the RTL team.- 11th Dec 2007 saw the announcement of government plans outlined by John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) to invest almost £1.3 billion into research aimed at meeting the key challenges facing the nation. The funding will be shared across four programmes to spearhead research on major issues affecting people across the UK and the world. The programmes will bring together the expertise of UK-based scientists across the seven UK Research Councils. Funding is being made available through the science budget allocations which were published by DIUS earlier this year as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review. DIUS will be spending a total of almost £6 billion per year on science and research by 2010/11
Overall DIUS will be spending almost £6 billion on science and research by the end of the CSR period. Nearly £4 billion is provided by the Science Budget. And nearly £2 billion will reach Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) through the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE) quality-related funding stream.
Key allocations of the Science Budget include almost £2 billion for medical research over three years - a funding rise of 30 per cent - to fund both basic and translational research. (see http://www.dius.gov.uk/- On the 8th November 2007 at the Innovate '07 event held in the QEII Conference Centre, the Technology Strategy Board was launched by John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills. The Technology Strategy Board’s vision is for the UK to be seen as a global leader in innovation and a magnet for technology-intensive companies, where new technology is applied rapidly and effectively to create wealth.( http://www.berr.gov.uk/innovation/technologystrategyboard/)
The feedback, workshop reports, presentations and videos of the key speakers have now been published. They can be found at http://www.innovate2007.co.uk/.
- Under Gordon Browns leadership June 2007 saw the reorganisation of the DTI and the formation of the new Dept of Innovation, Universities and Skills including what was previously OST within the DTI. IUS will be headed by John Denhan. See also www.dius.gov.uk
- With Bill Rammel Minister of State for Life Long Learning, Further and Higher Education
- Ian Pearson Minister of State For Science and Innovation (see the Innovation home page as of July07 still found within the DTI web pages)
- David Lammy Parlimentary Under Secretary of State For Skills
- Lord Triesman Parlimentary Under Secretary of State For Intelectual Property and Quality
- According to the Government the Department's primary role will be to drive forward delivery of the long-term vision to make Britain one of the best places in the world for science, research and innovation and to raise the level of education and skills at every level in our economy to give the UK the competitive edge.
- Intelectual Proerty: In Aug 2007 the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills published an independent report to the "Funders' Forum" entitled “What are the remaining obstacles to more streamlined negotiations between universities and businesses at the outset of research collaborations?”, a group of senior business people and university leaders, was invited to look at the issue of negotiating collaborative research agreements between universities and companies. see streamlining
The report states "The overarching conclusion is that while in the main the system is working well, there are some important problems. Addressing these could improve collaborative research negotiations, increasing the number of successful deals and the speed with which they are made."
These fall into the main themes:
- Overemphasis on IP. Both parties place excessive emphasis on ensuring their own ideal outcome from the negotiation in relation to IP, when it is often not even the most important aspect of the research collaboration.
- Unclear messages. There is still a lack of clarity over some important high level messages coming both from Government and public funders. For example, there is confusion as to whether the primary aim of collaborative research should be to generate income for universities or to create benefit for the wider economy; and it is not always clear what public research funders expect to see as an appropriate outcome in relation to IP.
- Need for good practice in negotiating process. We have identified a number of aspects of good practice in the process of negotiations, such as understanding the motivations of the other party and having appropriate escalation procedures. Whilst some of these are commonly recognised practices that are self-evidently sensible, it is clear that they are often not followed.
The full report and recomendations can be found at http://www.dius.gov.uk/publications/publications-streamlining.htm
- In June 2007 the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Intelectual Property in the Public Interest (SIPPI) project announced the results of a four nation survey.The survey conducted in the US, UK, Germany and Japan into how IP protection affects the R&D activities of scientists on a daily basis. The headline take home message of the surey affirms the finding that that intellectual property rights had little negative impact on the practice of science. For a summary see AAAS News Archive) or the full country by country report see http://sippi.aaas.org/Pubs/
- During 2007 the US Government is attempting to reform US Patent law with the feared effect from some of eroding the protection offered, The Patent Reform Act of 2007, proposes controversial changes to current US patent law it has been criticised particularly by the Life Sciences including the biotech and university communities. As of Sept07 it passed, the one remaining of the hurdles required before becoming law and was passed through the US House of Representatives.
The bill is reportedly being opposed by the life sciences sector principally on the basis of proposal in the bill of a “first-to-file,” as opposed to a "'first-to-invent system'; an open-ended, post-grant opposition system; and provisions dealing with apportionment of damages in IP-infringement lawsuits" significantly reducing the penalty imposed on Patent infringment and increasing the cost of bringing a successful suit to court in the US.
- European Commission recently adopted a Communication April 2007 on "Improving knowledge transfer between research institutions and industry across Europe : embracing open innovation" : http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/com2007182_en.pdf
See also "Voluntary guidelines for universities and other research institutions to improve their links with industry across Europe" : http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/sec2007449_en.pdf
- Dec 2006 saw the announcement of the formation of a new company "London Genetics" it is formed from a consortium of academic research centres including St George's, the concept behind London Genetics Limited is as an agency enabling partnerships between industry and world class academic centres of excellence in genetic and genomic-based research across London.
The Company's mission is to become a primary point of contact for industry wishing to conduct translational research or clinical studies in London. It hopes to translate genetic or genomic-based research into clinical benefit, demonstrating the commercial value of genetics.
London Genetics has been primed with two million pounds funding by the London Development Agency and is an equal partnership between Imperial College London, Kings College London, UCL, Queen Mary University of London, St George's Medical School, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Institute of Cancer Research. Prof Nick Lench has been appointed CEO.
- The Chancellor has announced (Dec 2005) a review of intellectual property rights in the UK. The Gower review will look at a number of aspects of the current regime, including the way in which Government administers the awarding of IP, its support to consumers and business, how well businesses are getting to grips with the existing copyright and patent system, and whether current law on IP infringement reflects today's digital environment. The review will run for 12 months and will be headed by Andrew Gowers, former Editor of the Financial Times.
- The Final Report of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property has now published and is available on the Review website: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/gowers/ The Government's response is contained in the Pre-Budget Report 2006.
- The Lambert Working Group on Intellectual Property
The Lambert review, sponsored by the Treasury in 2003, recommended that a set of model agreements be drawn up to assist Universities and industry, particularly SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), to collaborate more effectively. The Lambert Working Group on Intellectual Property was set up to deliver this objective. There are five model agreements which were provided to academic institutions 2004/5 resulting from that recommendation, each agreement providing a different approach in the key areas of who is to own, and have the right to exploit, the intellectual property in the results or outcome of the collaborative project. To find out more please visit the website: http://www.innovation.gov.uk/lambertagreements/
One year on and three quarters of institutions have reported benefits to streamlining agreements. With the most commonly used agreement resulting in IP residing with the company but allowing academic exploitation of the results. In 2006 the lambert model agreements have been suplemented with examples of others dealing with Intellectual Property related issues. These cover issues such as licensing, assignment of a patent, confidentiality, consultancy, loan of equipment or a transfer of material. Links are also provided in this to examples of a consortium agreement, the first to the well established DTI Link Model Agreement and the second to the more recent DTI Technology Programme Model Agreement. These Useful Resources also includes the Russell Group Studentship Agreement, a well-known example of a post-graduate studentship agreement.
Science & innovation investment framework 2004-2014 Spending Review
- The Government published a ten-year investment framework for science and innovation alongside the 2004 Spending Review. The framework sets out the Government’s ambition for UK science and innovation over the next decade, in particular their contribution to economic growth and public services, and the attributes and funding arrangements of a research system capable of delivering this.