从实验室到市场
BU Law hosts panel to examine the challenges of moving innovations from the university to the private market.
On Wednesday, November 2, 波士顿大学法学院 invited students and faculty to Inventions in Academia: Cross Currents and Challenges to discuss the difficulties of spinning out inventions created in university programs and laboratories for use and further development in the private sector. 安德鲁·塞拉斯, director of BU Law’s 技术与网络法律诊所, moderated the conversation.
小组成员包括执业律师、技术转让领域的教授，以及波士顿大学和麻省理工学院技术许可办公室的成员。 Jerry O’Connor, director of the 创业与知识产权诊所 at BU Law, opened the discussion by exploring the legislative mechanisms that give universities ownership of intellectual property from research innovations and start-up ventures created by faculty and students using federal research funding, and the difficulties that ventures, universities, investors, and others can face with this ownership regime.
讨论内容包括学生在大学支持下创办自己的公司的许可程序，以及大学何时将技术许可给初创企业，而不是老牌企业，以便在世界范围内发展。 Lesley Millar-Nicholson, director at MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, and Elizabeth Carlson, licensing director for life sciences at BU’s Office of Technology Development, spoke about the differences in licensing practices and the roles of each university as they help students and faculty prepare innovations for commercial investment.
Millar-Nicholson断言，技术转让办公室的运作往往会给大学带来收入损失，部分原因是他们认为自己的使命是帮助确保技术开发出来用于世界，而不仅仅是作为大学的收入来源。 卡尔森对此表示同意，并指出波士顿大学从其授权的创新中获得的任何投资回报要么归投资者所有，要么用于支持未来的版税。 他们都强调，技术转让主管应该做出帮助公众的决定，他们的决定应该真正投资于科学发展的使命。
小组讨论了这个领域的律师如何经常面临与特权和利益冲突相关的道德问题，包括当他们代表大学和依赖大学技术的初创企业时。 Greenberg - Traurig律师事务所的律师梅丽莎·亨特-恩索尔（Melissa Hunter-Ensor）博士讨论了她与约翰·霍普金斯大学（John Hopkins University）一家初创公司的合作，该公司开发了首个获得FDA批准的卵巢癌诊断方法。 由于潜在的冲突，她描述了在这一法律领域经常使用的一种工具——共同利益协议——在这种协议中，两个关系密切的当事人可以要求共同的律师-客户特权。 然而，她警告说，签订这样一份协议的各方都有可能在法庭上得不到支持。
辛西娅·劳里·达尔是宾夕法尼亚大学法学院德特金知识产权和技术法律诊所的执业法学副教授，她谈到了法律诊所的学生和律师在宾夕法尼亚大学技术许可办公室工作时的道德义务，包括可能出现的棘手的特权问题。
The event was organized by BU Law’s Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property & Cyberlaw Program, a collaboration between BU Law and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that brings MIT and BU student entrepreneurs and innovators together with future lawyers from BU to address the legal and regulatory compliance issues associated with their academic and extracurricular pursuits and their efforts to turn ideas into businesses.