Wake Forest University enjoyed the nation's fourth-highest technology transfer licensing income for fiscal 2006, according to a study recently published by the Association of University Technology Managers.
The private Winston-Salem institution is the only North Carolina university to rank in the top 20, as weighed by the association's metrics. It has led the state in the AUTM ranking for several years.
Licensing Income
WFU licensing income was $61 million in fiscal 2006 on $146.4 million in research expenditures, compared with $49.9 million the previous year. The university logged 66 invention disclosures for 2006, and received three patent approvals.
The survey showed that in 2006 Duke University earned $4.1 million, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill got $2.4 million, East Carolina University $344,000, North Carolina A&T State University $144,000, $30,000 for the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, the University of North Carolina-Charlotte got $19,000 and there was none shown for North Carolina State University.
The AUTM Licensing Survey for FY 2006 shows the University of California system in the top spot among 189 institutions polled, though it reports the combined totals of many individual campuses. It also included a $100 million boost from the pre-trial settlement of a case involving Monsanto and a patent on the recombinant DNA used to make a dairy cow growth hormone.
Those major infusions are significant in the rankings. Atlanta-based Emory University took the top spot a year ago by including a one-time $525 million payment for future royalties on the HIV/AIDS drug Emtriva. This time Emory dropped to 17th on the list, reporting licensing income of $17.8 million.
Second-place New York University garnered the most revenue among individual campuses, despite its smaller amount of research spending compared with most of the other highly ranked institutions.
More Information
The survey indicates that increases in research spending at colleges has led to increases in the number of new products that emerge from the campuses. Total research expenditures reached more than $45 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, an increase of $3.1 billion over the 2005 total. That's the largest absolute increase since 2003, the report says.
Most of the research is funded by U.S. government agencies, followed by industrial sources. Each year these two sources contribute between 71 and 75 percent of research funds. Nearly 700 new products that originated on campuses joined the marketplace in 2006, up from 527 products introduced the previous year.
Members of the association accounted for 18,874 new invention disclosures (an increase of 1,492 over 2005 totals), filed 15,900 U.S. patent applications (up from 15,115 in 2005) and saw 3,255 patents issued. The number of licenses received also increased — from 4,932 in 2005 to 5,000 in 2006.