RI Trails Most of New England in Developing Patents and Local Colleges Lag Their Peers

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

GoLocalProv Business Team

RI ranks 24th

Rhode Island is quite average for developing patents per capita in America -- ranked 24th in the country, but in New England, it ranks only above Maine for developing intellectual property.

By contrast, per capita, Massachusetts not only ranks second only to California in the country in developing patents, but some of its top universities are among the tops in the world for creating new innovation and technology.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology generated 306 U.S. Utility Patents in 2017, which was second most of the U.S. universities ranked -- only the University of California earned more.

Harvard University ranked 9th with 156, and Tuft University was ranked 70th and was granted 37 patents.

Brown and URI Lag Peers

Brown University had 18 U.S. patents in 2017 and “11 as of November 2018 -- we may have received one more in December,” according to Brian Clark, Director of News and Editorial Development at Brown University.

Brown’s spokesperson was first to say that the University has significant work to do.

“Speaking more broadly, I'd say that research at Brown has the potential to add to the state’s innovation output, but it is not commercialized at the scale we'd like to see,” said Clark.

“While there are scholars interested in exploring the commercial potential of their work, they often lack the professional incentives and the business training to pursue commercial opportunities. This is definitely an area where we're taking steps to grow,” he added.

At the University of Rhode Island, only two patents were granted to university-affiliated research in 2017. According to URI data, the College of Engineering at URI has not been granted a patent since 2014.

Of the top 20 universities in the world by patents granted in 2017, nine of them were public universities in the United States or affiliated. “The institutions on this list are doing incredible work promoting academic innovation and incubating groundbreaking technologies which exemplify the importance of technology transfer to institutional success," said Paul R. Sanberg, president of the National Academy of Inventors.

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Focus at Brown to Improve the Commercialization of IP

Brown was not ranked in the top 100 universities. Harvard, Cornell, Penn, and Columbia were all ranked in the top 20 patent granted universities -- and Brown is making an effort to transform its effort to commercialize its technology.

“Daniel Behr was hired at Brown in June 2017 to re-engineer our tech transfer efforts. His office's recent efforts include an expansion of Brown Biomedical Innovation Inc. (BBII), which helps biomedical research projects to bridge “valley of death” — the gap between when the National Institutes of Health stops funding research and when private investors are willing to step up,” said Clark.

“BBII recently established an $8.2 million fund to develop new technologies and hired a former biotech entrepreneur as managing director. Already, BBII has 26 preliminary requests for development funding,” added Clark.

Brown is also transforming how it does business with partners in developing technology. “The goal is for Brown to become a more user-friendly partner to industry, moving away from the transactional approaches that prevail in many university technology transfer offices.”

But, while Brown is working to transform its IP capacity, there is little transformation in the rest of Rhode Island — in academic, healthcare or business segments. On the top 50 companies in the world for IP, not of them had a significant presence located in RI.

RI Trails Most of New England in Developing Patents and Local Colleges Lag Their Peers

Related Slideshow: Patents by States—See Who Is the Most Innovative

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