Massey University, one of New Zealand’s largest universities with some 35,000 students, is seeing its commercialisation efforts paying off as its Business Development and Commercialisation unit is earning significant annual royalties for innovators.
Between 2010 and 2013, the technology transfer office was paid a total of NZ$1.5m ($1.3m) in royalties from intellectual property licences, with NZ$335,000 ($289,000) of this income being distributed to staff and student inventors.
Two of the university’s recent successes are Biolumic, a provider of lighting solutions for large-scale horticultural customers, and Hyper T-Earspot, a product that provides a new method for administering treatment for an overactive thyroid in cats. In total, Massey has so far developed twenty intellectual property licences and 9 spinout companies.
Mark Cleaver, director of Business Development and Commercialisation, said: “The revenue not only recognises the contribution of the inventors, it also shows that commercialisation is an important mechanism for transferring knowledge from the University to the wider community. Projects like Biolumic and Hyper T-Earspot are what we are all about. They combine excellent science with commercial opportunity and are helping to drive the success of New Zealand and Massey University as the engine of the new New Zealand.”
