Search Results for: intellectual property

15 Good Minutes: Ichiro Matsumura

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

For Emory Professor of Biochemistry Ichiro Matsumura, PhD, inspiration to pursue a career in research came from an unlikely source: a concussion. When Matsumura was in college at MIT, he got into a bike accident that left him hospitalized for several months. After being released from the hospital, Matsumura was prepared to retake all his courses from that semester over the summer. However, one of Matsumura’s professors, Harry Lodish, gave him the option to write a report from a list of topics instead of retaking the course, given that he had done well on the class’s first midterm. The topic Read More …

15 Good Minutes: Cassandra Quave

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

When most people think about medicine, plants are not what immediately jumps to mind. However, for Emory Assistant Professor Cassandra Quave, PhD, the relationship between plants and medicine is career-defining. Quave is an ethnobotanist, meaning she studies human interaction with plants and their potential medical properties. Her work has led to important discoveries including treatments for eczema and skin infections. Quave describes her research as investigating compounds on a fundamental level, derived from their source in plants. She and her lab then determine whether the compound has properties that would allow it to be used in medicine. “In a single Read More …

The Differences between SBIR and STTR Cheat Sheet

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs both provide Small Business Administration (SBA) grants to small businesses for research. The two programs share the same three phases, with separate federal contracts awarded for Phases I and II. Phase I is innovation and research, where the scientific merit and commercial viability of an innovation is studied.  Phase II focuses on the innovation’s development, demonstration and delivery. Phase III involves preparation for commercial rollout and is funded by outside sources rather than the SBA. While the two programs share many similarities, they have some important differences Read More …

Emory Start-ups Continue to Have Impact, Success, and Products to Market

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

In 2014, OTT published a comprehensive survey of all start-up companies founded on Emory intellectual property. The results proved Emory to be an economic hub in the South, generating not only private and public investment capital, but also job growth and life-saving products. Across the 72 companies surveyed at the time, 1,200 workers had been employed at peak, mostly in the areas of drug development, diagnostic materials, and software-based products. These start-ups cumulatively raised more than a billion dollars in funding and brought 30 different products to market. Now, five years later, OTT has updated its survey, unquestionably demonstrating the Read More …

The Small Business Administration: Its Resources and Opportunities

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Getting a startup off the ground is a grueling task. What’s harder is working through the process alone. Luckily, the U.S. federal government recognizes the value in entrepreneurship and as such, works to support small companies through various resources offered by the Small Business Administration (SBA). In this article, we will highlight the key resources offered by the SBA broken into four categories. Funding Programs For its funding programs, the SBA mostly acts as a mediator between lenders and small businesses. For instance, interested entrepreneurs can utilize the SBA’s Lender Match service, an online referral tool that connects small businesses Read More …

Getting Started with a Business Plan

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

A business plan outlines a company’s goals and the strategies by which it achieves these goals. Typically, a business plan consists of: a) an executive summary, b) a description of products or services, c) industry overview/market analysis, d) marketing and sales strategies, e) operations/execution strategy, f) competitive analysis, g) description of management team, h) financial statement and i) an exit strategy. Below is a high-level description of each of these components. A business plan starts with an executive summary, an overview of the business plan. This operates as a reader on the company and is meant to concisely communicate its Read More …

From the Director: IP Policy Q&A

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Many people are unaware, but most universities, including Emory, have formal intellectual property (IP) policies. At first glance it might seem counterintuitive to the university mission of creating and sharing knowledge, but the policies are written in a way that both encourage scholarly activity and the open exchange of ideas while balancing the potential to commercialize new inventions. What these polices say is that if one happens to make an invention that could end up as a new product then the institution owns the invention – but in return, as part of the deal, the institution fronts various costs associated Read More …

Monte Eaves: A Kauffman Success Story

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Monte Eaves is a professor of surgery at Emory University and Medical Director at Emory Aesthetic Center. He is also the man behind EMRGE, a company developing products that are revolutionizing the wound closure industry. EMRGE challenges the traditional needle and thread wound closure procedure with noninvasive and cost-effective technology that promotes healing and minimizes scarring. For this, Eaves was recently awarded the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) award for 2017 Startup of The Year, one of many achievements. Shortly after, we got to talk with him about how he got there and the role OTT and Emory’s Kauffman Foundation Read More …

The Ins and Outs of Creative Commons Manuscript Submissions

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

It’s fairly easy to prove ownership of a newly purchased jacket: simply pull out your receipt. But what about a story you wrote, or an invention you designed? What if someone takes your original plan and modifies it? What if a rival claims you stole their idea? The question of ownership only amplifies in importance as technology and progress gains more speed than ever before. In the field of research, this question is critical: what is the point in investing in and developing a technology that the competition can copy as soon as you share it? Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and Read More …

What Does Mixing Math, Physics, Computers, and Imagination Give You? A Pioneer in Radiation Oncology.

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Ian R. Crocker, MD, FACR, is a radiation oncologist specializing in brain and eye tumors, who worked at Winship Cancer Institute for over 30 years. Throughout his career, Crocker was an active member of multiple innovation and research teams that sought to develop new medical technologies and methods to improve treatment outcomes and patient care. Some of his most notable successes include his co-invention of the BetaCath system to prevent the re-narrowing of arteries after an angioplasty and his involvement in the Emory start-up, Velocity Medical Solutions, which produced new, widely used imaging software to improve cancer treatment. Now retired Read More …

Lessons from Baseball: Applying Passion and Competitive Drive to Radiation Oncology

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Tim Fox worked at Emory University as an Associate Professor & Director of Medical Physics from 1994 to 2014. In 2005 he and three of his Emory colleagues created the Emory start-up, Velocity Medical Solutions, which built and sold a multimodal medical imaging software. Velocity was later acquired by Varian Medical Systems and in 2014, Fox left Emory to accept a full-time position as the Associate Vice President of Imaging Informatics at Varian. Fox grew up playing baseball and now applies that same passion and drive to his entrepreneurial endeavors Just like the famous line from the baseball movie, Field Read More …

IP Jargon: What are they talking about? – Part 2

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

When beginning the process of protecting your invention, lots of industry specific terms and legal jargon get thrown around and can seem a bit daunting. To help ease you into the world of intellectual property protection, OTT has collected and defined some of the most common words and phrases that you’re likely to come across. In this two-part post, we’ll discuss jargon heard in patent statutes and applications and during the patent review process and a patent appeal (Part 1 can be found here). In this part we will cover jargon often heard during the patent review and appeal processes. Read More …

IP Jargon: What are they talking about? – Part 1

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

When beginning the process of protecting your invention, lots of industry specific terms and legal jargon get thrown around and can seem a bit daunting. To help ease you into the world of intellectual property protection, OTT has collected and defined some of the most common words and phrases that you’re likely to come across. In this two-part post, we’ll discuss jargon heard in patent statutes and applications and during the patent review process and a patent appeal. In this part we will cover jargon found in patent statutes and applications. Patent Statue Jargon Statutory Subject Matter: Something that can Read More …

Six Things to Know About Copyrights

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

There are plenty of myths and confusion around copyright law. Many people aren’t sure what a copyright covers and how it differs from other types of intellectual property (IP) protection like patents or trademarks. Although a blog is too short to go into all the specific details of copyright law, we hope to hit a few key highpoints here and help clarify what a copyright is and its function. A copyright differs from a patent or trademark in that it protects an original work of authorship. A patent protects functional inventions or discoveries and a trademark protects words, phrases, symbols, Read More …

What do Those Extra Letters Mean? Professional Designations in Technology Transfer

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Many members of our team carry additional letters behind their names that you’ve probably seen, like PhD, JD, or MBA. But what do the others, like CLP and RTTP, mean? These are certifications and designations attained by those in the technology transfer and licensing fields. They are administered and distributed by the professional societies our team members participate in, such as the Licensing Executive Society and the Alliance of Technology Transfer Professionals. These designations represent a certain level of proficiency and experience in our field. They also add an additional layer of credibility for our academic and industry partners. Here Read More …