SELECTED STORIES
Back issues by year published
2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996
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| ˇViva Cinema! |
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| City of Angels |
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| Idea Factory |
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| It's Not Easy Being Green |
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| Stage Craft |
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| Bruin Walk |
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| External Affairs |
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Currently, OIPA is managing 725 active cases in its intellectual-property portfolio, with 350 active, issued patents. UCLA’s licensing activity returns $10 million a year in royalty and fee income, which is shared with inventors, their labs and research programs at UCLA. Although Neighbour is very optimistic about OIPA’s growth, “It will be many years before we see a commensurate increase in revenues, because you only really see big money when you have a product selling in the marketplace and you’re collecting annual royalties,” he notes. “The lead time from license to the market can be anywhere from two to 15 years.” Yet, he adds, “At the end of the day, tech transfer is not about the money. Tech transfer is about creating an environment where our researchers will flourish. It’s a business-development process.” Parhami is eager to move forward — but he is patient. He is seeking what he estimates to be about $11 million in research and development support over a period of five years. He will start, he hopes, with about $600,000 from the Tech Coast Angels. “That will get us to the next stage,” he says, “to the next round of financing. “We wouldn’t have gotten this far without the positive feedback and guidance of OIPA,” Parhami says. “They just kept telling me, ‘Come back and work with us. One way or another we’re going to try to help you.’ ” If funding doesn’t materialize, he says, an alternative might be to find an industry partner — “maybe a pharmaceutical company that will license the patent from UCLA and then give us the resources that we want to do our research.” He’d still prefer to start his own company, he admits, but he’ll take it as it comes, just so he can keep moving forward. “There are people who do science because of the enjoyment of discovering a scientific fact, and that is wonderful,” Parhami says. “But an additional thing that I expect from my work is to help somebody who is suffering from a disease. And in order to do that, I need a lot of resources.”
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