1	Texas Therapeutics Institute Intellectual Property/Technology Transfer Considerations Bruce Butler, Ph.D., Vice President Office of Technology Management, UTHSC-Houston Chris Capelli, M.D., Vice President Technology Based Ventures, UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Rick Friedman, Associate Director Licensing Office of Technology Commercialization, UT Austin
2	Tech transfer trends Inter-disciplinary research and collaboration among institutions on the rise Increasing support of tech transfer in Texas as engine for economic development (Texas Emerging Technology Fund, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, Texas Ignition Fund) Maturing of tech transfer capabilities, including standardization of processes
3	Industry will have one point of contact to acquire TTI IP Track record and processes for TTI participants to collaborate on IP Start-ups: 4 recent spinouts of collaborative research (Windmill, Remicalm, Inavonx, NanoMedical Systems) UTHSC-H, MDACC and UT-Austin executed over 10 IIA’s for collaborative research inventions. Established processes: Standard Inter-institutional Agreements (IIA) Terms (as a result of UT System-wide effort led by the 3 TTI participants) and jointly determined operating guidelines for management of particular cases As a result, industry will only need to contact the one UT participant with delegated authority to license UT’s rights for a particular TTI invention.
4	Industry should expect professional, efficient IP licensing from TTI Uniform patent licensing agreement Texas Governor’s office leading an effort to create template patent license TTI participants actively participating/supporting template creation process Emphasis at UT is to get technologies out the door; increasing support from State of Texas, UT System and from within institutions to accomplish that goal.
5	Patent prosecution funding remains a key challenge for TTI commercialization Academic imperative to publish can require early patent filings of potentially promising molecules before industry-credible proof of concept (e.g., animal data) The challenge: how do universities fund worldwide patent prosecution for large numbers of molecules?
6	Conclusion For licensing TTI IP, industry will have one point of contact and should expect professional and efficient treatment. The challenge remains to fund patent prosecution within the university to provide highest value IP rights to industry for those molecules that prove to be commercially promising.