September 19 – 21
Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards
Baltimore, Maryland

Register Now    Meet the Instructors

SUNDAY, SEPT.18
3:00 - 5:00 PM	Registration The programming on Sunday is optional for those who are in town and need a very basic intro to intellectual property.
4:00 – 5:00 P.M.	IP Overview One of the foundations of a tech transfer program is intellectual property management – analyzing likelihood of patentability and/or other forms of IP protection, communicating with inventors about the often-complex process, and managing outside counsel and the attendant costs. If you are unfamiliar with patents and copyrights, we will provide you with a high-level overview that will help guide your understanding of the material presented throughout the Essentials course.
5:00 – 6:00 P.M.	One-on-one time for attendees to ask questions about IP If you are in town, meet other attendees and find companions for dinner on your own. In addition, all the instructors will be on hand to answer any lingering questions you might have about intellectual property, including questions that require more in-depth information than provided in the IP Overview session.

 

MONDAY, SEPT. 19
7:00 – 8:00 A.M.	Registration Breakfast on Your Own, Coffee & Tea Service will be Provided
8:00 – 8:30 A.M.	Welcome & Introduction Meet your instructors and gain important information on the tools we will be using throughout the next three days to introduce you to the foundations of technology licensing.
8:30 – 10:00 A.M.	Innovation Assessment With an ever-increasing pool of innovations to assess, time management and focusing on critical elements is essential. Assessing innovations requires understanding its application(s), whether it addresses an unfilled need, and whether it addresses a problem. This session covers business, legal, and technical considerations used to decide whether the innovation has a viable commercial opportunity that warrants the allocation of additional resources to protect and market the innovation to potential licensees.
10:00 – 10:30 A.M.	Break
10:30 – 11:00 A.M.	Innovation Assessment Cont.
11:00 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.	Market Research Attendees will learn the basic tools and methods to conduct market research and the use of “score cards” as a tool for assessment. We will describe various types of market research, provide practical resources for performing research, and illuminate methods for discovering unmet market needs.
12:30 – 1:30 P.M.	Lunch
1:30 – 3:15 P.M.	Reaching Partners In this session, we will synthesize the outcomes of your assessment and market research to start marketing the technology. How do you develop and deliver a message that captures the attention of potential partners? How do you generate leads and effectively manage them? What untapped resources are available to you? And how can you pull it all together to create an effective, scalable marketing plan? We will explore tools and methods to keep you organized, productive, and focused on results.
3:15 – 3:45 P.M.	Break
3:45 – 5:00 P.M.	Reaching Partners
5:30 – 6:30 P.M.	Networking Reception

 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 20
7:00 – 8:00 A.M.	Breakfast
8:00 – 10:00 A.M.	Introduction to Valuation It’s time to start working with your commercialization partner on the financial terms of your deal. We will discuss how to use the information you have and translate it into deal terms that work for both you and your partner?
10:00 – 10:30 A.M.	Break
10:30 AM – 12:30 P.M.	Fundamental Framework of a License Previous sessions focused on identifying a potential partner for the commercialization of your innovation and some of the agreements surrounding commercialization. The next step is to agree on a license framework that addresses the needs and concerns of the parties and the myriad details that are part of an intellectual property transaction. License agreements lay out these fundamental understandings in legally binding contracts that govern the parties’ ongoing relationship, often long after the original drafters have left their organizations.  We will show you how to see the forest for the trees in these often complex agreements by focusing on their underlying functional framework.
12:30 – 1:30 P.M.	Lunch
1:30 – 3:00 P.M.	Agreements in Technology Transfer In addition to licenses, several other agreements play a role in the tech transfer process: Confidentiality Agreements (CDAs), material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), Sponsored Research, and Inter-institutional Agreements (IIAs) being the most common. Certain terms can be found across all agreements. In this session, we will engage in a high-level discussion of these agreements, some of the common terms, and how the agreements will have an impact on commercializing innovations.
3:00 – 3:30 P.M.	Break
3:30 – 4:30 P.M.	Responding to Companies The previous three sessions laid the foundation for what you’d like to see in an agreement. Naturally, your company partner will have requests and concerns of their own. The Essentials instructors will present issues that arise frequently and/or that are particularly difficult for a university to help you understand the company’s perspective and arrive at solutions that meet the needs of both parties.
4:30 – 5:30 P.M.	Special Needs of Startups Startups often requires much more attention than typical licensees. The process of establishing a startup begins with helping the investigators understand their role in the startup, making sure that institutional policies are addressed, and the creation of programs to support startups. This session provides a high-level overview of the issues that need to be addressed and common and evolving practices at universities that support the creation and sustenance of startups.

 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 21
7:00 – 8:00 A.M.	Breakfast
8:00 – 10:00 A.M.	Basic Negotiations You know what you want and what you need out of a deal. So does your partner. It’s time to learn the basics of negotiation to arrive at a licensing agreement that works for both of you.
10:00 – 10:15 A.M.	Break
10:15 – 11:00 A.M.	Basic Negotiations Cont.
11:00 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.	Beyond the Deal Your job isn’t done when the deal is signed. The Essentials instructors will take you beyond the deal in the broadest sense: not only maintaining strong relationships with your partners and re-negotiating agreements as circumstances change, but also developing your own career as a technology transfer professional. We will devote time to delve deeper into issues attendees have raised during this course and to answer new or unanswered questions you might still have.
12:30 P.M.	Course Concludes