Entrepreneurial Resources For Faculty, Staff, and Students

Brant Cheblowski, co-founder of California Seaweed Company and former MAS student, receives a congratulations from Scripps Director Margaret Leinen after participating in the Triton Innovation Challenge
Brant Chlebowski, co-founder of California Seaweed Company and former MAS student, receives a congratulations from Scripps Director Margaret Leinen after participating in the Triton Innovation Challenge

 

Intellectual Property and Commercialization

UC San Diego Office of Innovation & Commercialization

The UC San Diego Office of Innovation and Commercialization (OIC) is part of the Office of Research Affairs. The OIC has established a campus-wide innovation platform to build a systemic and sustainable innovation culture, to create a vibrant regional ecosystem, and to accelerate the commercialization of campus inventions.

Disclosures & Intellectual Property

Disclosing a technology or concept to the Office of Innovation and Commercialization is the first step in accessing the legal, entrepreneurial, and business resources available at the institution to protect, grow, share, license, or spinout your technology. To maximize the potential for your technology to be protected through a patent, it is essential to disclose as soon as possible (i.e. well before public presentation or publication).

Commercialization

Commercialization is the process of transforming an idea into a viable product or service that generates revenue. At its simplest, for a concept or technology to be viable for commercialization, there must be people or organizations willing to pay for the product or service in excess of the costs associated with providing that service or product.

Inventions generated at UC San Diego during the course of research may be owned in part by the University of California. There may be opportunities to license the invention to an outside entity for use, or the inventor may be interested in creating a business around his or her invention. Disclosing the invention to the OIC is essential for evaluating appropriate options for intellectual property and commercialization. There are a myriad of resources at UC San Diego to educate and support students, staff, postdocs and faculty on commercialization (see below). The Office of Innovation and Commercialization Technology Transfer points of contact are Skip Cynar (scynar@ucsd.edu) and Victoria Cajipe (vcajipe@ucsd.edu).

Confidentiality & Non-disclosure Agreements

When working with industry sponsors of research, collaborators, or licensors you may consider or be asked to put into place an agreement to protect your and/or the company's confidential information. Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or Confidentiality Disclosure Agreements (CDAs) are agreements that set out obligations for conversations that contain confidential and/or proprietary information from one or both parties.  The terms control the disclosure, receipt, and use of the confidential or proprietary information. Commonly, this type of agreement is needed when a sponsor or collaborator and a principal investigator are contemplating a research collaboration, and first need to exchange confidential information to evaluate the collaboration's potential. The primary focus of NDA/CDA is to ensure that the rights of each party are protected with respect to its ownership of its confidential information and restrictions on the other party's use or dissemination of that information. Should a formal research relationship arise from these initial discussions, confidentiality terms in a sponsored research agreement or unfunded collaboration agreement would supplement or take the place of the NDA/CDA. When considering the exchange of confidential or proprietary information, please contact your business office and SIO C&G (Frank Truong, ftruong@ucsd.edu). 

Please note that NDAs/CDAs are outside the fundamental research exception.  All parties involved (institutions and individuals) must undergo restricted party screening, and any controlled items or materials may only be exchanged under a control plan developed in advance by UCSD Export Control.

Contacts

Learn more:

Vanessa Scott
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Director, Corporate Affiliates, Business Development, Industry Outreach, and Innovation
vscott@ucsd.edu

Canon Purdy
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Industry Relations & Innovation Analyst
c1purdy@ucsd.edu

 

UC San Diego Resources for Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, and Students