Our Objectives
The BYU Technology Transfer Office has been established to help faculty,
students and staff commercialize any technology or product developed through
their association with the university. The office provides professional,
business and intellectual property services to relieve BYU personnel of the
burden of being extensively involved in the business and legal aspects of the
commercialization process. The office, working closely with the General
Counsel's office, provides expertise in business relationships, negotiations,
protection of intellectual property, marketing, license agreements, contracts,
and entrepreneurship.
While the primary focus of the BYU faculty is teaching, research, and other
scholarly activities, often the products of scholarship have application as
products or services beyond the gates of the academy. Under most circumstances,
these intellectual properties can only be utilized by society if they are made
into commercial products and sold by a company with a profit motive. The primary
purpose of the Technology Transfer Office is to facilitate the transfer of
university-developed technologies to the marketplace by protecting the
intellectual property through patents and copyrights and subsequently licensing
the protected intellectual properties to companies outside the university.
Patents and copyrights are required because most of the technologies developed
at a university require substantial investment by the company for final product
and/or market development before they can be sold to the public. Unless
companies have the protection of exclusive rights to the technology (e.g., a
patent) they will not make the investment necessary to bring a technology to the
marketplace.
The Technology Transfer Office will evaluate the technology, secure intellectual
property protection, find a company to develop and sell the product, and
negotiate the license agreement. The revenues received from the license are
shared between the developer(s) as personal income (45%) and the university as
research support (55%). Alternately, faculty developers can direct up to 90% to
their research.