Читать книгу University Intellectual Property - Graham Richards - Страница 8

When in the late 1980s the university did begin to claim ownership of intellectual property following a law change during Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, I started the first of the modern spin-out companies where the university had as of right some of the equity as a result of its contribution of IP. This was Oxford Molecular Ltd, founded in 1989. That company had an initial public offering (IPO) in 1994 before being sold in two parts in 2000. It is worth noting that the University benefitted to the tune of £10 million from that company.

When I became head of the Chemistry Department at Oxford in 1997, the big item in my in-tray was the building of a new research laboratory. This required raising some £64 million and this was achieved with a novel source of funding; the City of London company Beeson Gregory provided some £20 million up front in return for half of the university’s equity in spin-out companies created in the Chemistry Department for a period of 15 years, with a similar arrangement for licences. In the decade following the deal, set up in the year 2000, some 15 companies were formed of which five have gone public after successful IPOs. Both Beeson Gregory and Oxford have benefitted significantly from the arrangement.

Beeson Gregory, following a merger with Evolution, then went on to create a subsidiary to replay aspects of the deal with other universities. This separate company, initially named IP2IPO Ltd, later IP Group Plc, has partnerships with a dozen UK universities and has been responsible for the founding of some 70 companies, of which a dozen are now publicly owned following IPOs.

I was chairman of IP2IPO Plc for a time and am now senior non-executive director of IP Group, and in addition I am or have been a non-executive director of six university spin-out companies. I was also in large part responsible for the founding of Oxford University’s technology transfer office, Isis Innovation, and a director thereof for 20 years. This has given me a wide overview of the field of university IP development and commercialisation. In my work, I have seen that of the several forms of intellectual property it is the case of patents which has been most closely followed and so it is to these that I will now turn.