Viclink has introduced a scheme, supported by 26 international institutions, that gives businesses and non-governmental organisations access to free licences for university research.
Viclink, the tech transfer arm of Victoria University, has launched a program to give free licences to local companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to commercialise research conducted at the university.
Dubbed Easy Access IP (EAIP), the program was announced earlier this month but launched at the Open Source Open Society conference in Wellington this week, which was also sponsored by Victoria University.
Bianca Grizhar, Viclink’s open innovation manager who championed the idea, hopes the scheme will help the institution work more closely with industry and bring to market technologies that will benefit the local economy and communities.
Interested companies can search an online portal to identify research of interest.
Businesses that license technology through EAIP will be required to provide Victoria University continued access for research purposes and will need to prove that their product will be beneficial to the economy, updating the institution on progress annually.
Companies will have a period of three years to commercialise the research. If they fail to do this, all rights will revert to Victoria University.
Victoria has also signed up 26 international universities to participate in the program to date – seven institutions from Australia, two from Canada, one each from China, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany, two from Sweden and 11 from the UK.
