Technion plays tough in Microsoft IP suit

Comment

The Technion is considered a fairly lenient university when it comes to defending its intellectual property.

The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology is considered a fairly lenient university when it comes to defending its intellectual property. The most famous example is the patent it never registered on the protein Ubiquitin, the discovery of which yielded the first Noble Prize to Technion faculty members Prof. Aaron Ciechanover and Prof. Avram Hershko in 2004, but from which it did not earn a dime.

Only a few well-known companies and products have emerged from the Technion, including Mazor Robotics Ltd. (TASE:MZOR), Regentis Biomaterials Ltd., Bio-Rad Israel Ltd., and the drug Azilect, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries' (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) for the treatment of Parkison's disease.

The Technion's activity in this area is less than similar institutions of the same status, such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem or the Weizmann Institute of Science. This is also the case, even though the Technion is in a good position to produce inventions and companies. Its core faculties are in engineering and applied sciences, and its research is heavily involved in the entrepreneur community. The university also has operations for encouraging collaboration with start-ups. Logically, inventions have emerged from the university, but it never bothered to track them, or collect royalties.

Those days are apparently over, or more crudely, the Technion is fed up with being a sucker. The same process is happening at other universities. The state and Sheba Medical Center Tel Hashomer have filed a NIS 500 million lawsuit against Omrix, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ). The lawsuit follows a settlement with Ventor Technologies, which was acquired by Medtronic Inc. (NYSE: MDT). Ventor's founder, Prof. Ehud Shvemental, paid the state tens of millions of dollars, a third of his profit from the sale. In the wake of these cases, the government changed the method of compensation for inventions by hospital doctors.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 7, 2012

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012

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