Alta rebrands to University of Birmingham Enterprise

Alta Innovations, the tech transfer office of University of Birmingham, rebranded as University of Birmingham Enterprise today to underscore the relationship with its owner.

University of Birmingham Enterprise will continue to oversee intellectual property (IP) and licensing, as well as the $7m Spinout Investment Fund and the Academic Consultancy Service.

The unit will also handle university support programs for entrepreneurship, academic innovation and spinout development, previously provided under University of Birmingham Research and Innovation Services.

University of Birmingham Enterprise will also oversee the university’s startup incubation facilities at Birmingham Research Park.

James Wilkie, chief executive of University of Birmingham Enterprise, launched Alta Innovations in 2008 to improve intellectual property (IP) flows at the university. The division acts as a wholly-owned agent, and as such cannot generate profits on IP that have been assigned to it.

University of Birmingham Enterprise currently has 36 spinouts in its portfolio, which attracted funding worth £10.2m ($13.5m) through 2016-2017. It filed 70 patents during the period and signed 20 commercial licences.

One Birmingham spinout to have been backed by the unit is Smart Antenna Technologies, which secured $1.2m from a consortium including Spinout Investment Fund in January 2017. The company is designing an antenna that combines Bluetooth, GPS, 4G and 5G frequencies.

Wilkie said: “In practice the wholly-owned trading company and the departments within the directorate have been working in close collaboration for many years.

“We have had a great deal of success and felt it was the right time to change the name and make it clear we operate on behalf of an educational charity, University of Birmingham.

“Matching the name of the company to the name of the directorate will also ensure we have a consistent profile to external stakeholders including funders and commercial partners.”