What We Do

OTL is responsible for managing the intellectual property assets of Stanford University.

When presented at a scientific meeting or published in a journal, scientific insights and academic breakthroughs draw interest and enthusiasm from the research community. However, without a company willing to invest in bringing the invention to marketplace, it is just as likely to end on the page. At OTL our charter is to help turn scientific progress into tangible products, while returning income to the inventor and to the University to support further research.

OTL receives invention disclosures from Stanford faculty, staff and students, evaluates these disclosures for their commercial possibilities, and when possible licenses them to industry. If successfully licensed, cash royalties collected by OTL provide funding to the inventors' departments and schools, as well as personal shares for the inventors themselves.

We typically begin by reviewing an invention with its inventor to learn about potential applications. We then develop a licensing strategy, consider the technical and market risks and decide whether to patent the invention. Together with the inventors, we try to find companies that might be interested in the invention and seek a product champion within a company before negotiating a licensing agreement.

Although patentable inventions do constitute the majority of OTL's licensing activities, we also handle copyright (software), trademark licensing, Tangible Research Property (TRP), and outgoing Material Transfer Agreements for biological materials.