When Jon Soderstrom was president he would blog about the highlights of AUTM board meetings shortly after they occurred. Recent discussions with members indicate that the blogs have been missed, so I am reinstating them.
The board met last week in Chicago for one-and-a-half days. The major topics of discussion were:
- Genetic testing and licensing
- Bayh-Dole 30th anniversary (BD30) celebration progress
- Public policy updates
- AUTM planning for 2011
- Surveys
- WIPO
I discussed with the board that, during recent visits with Congressional staffers, BIO and NIH it has become clear that AUTM needs to take a leadership role in developing best practices for licensing genetic diagnostics. The clear message we’ve received is that if we don’t do it, policymakers (or others) will do it for us. A first draft that is the starting point of a Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology-type document for this issue has been generated and routed to a small circle of interested parties. The board agrees that the next step is to work closely with leaders in the community and BIO to develop a final document that clearly defines our principles of getting science into the public’s hands while not restricting AUTM members’ flexibility in licensing deals. The board will keep you updated on this as it progresses.
Robin Rasor, President-Elect, reported on the progress being made with the BD30 Web site, www.b-d30.org. If you haven’t checked out this site yet, I encourage you to do so. While the site is still in its early stages it explains why it became important to the technology transfer community in 1980 for this legislation to pass and the impact it has had in the last 30 years. Current work is on the Impact Map, which will allow you to self-populate it with your stories of how federally funded research at your institution is benefitting the public. The map should be live at the beginning of September, so watch for an announcement to technology transfer office directors about how to get your information on the map (so to speak!). AUTM is planning events to celebrate the anniversary.
Andy Cohn, Vice President for Public Policy, provided a public policy update. There is no news on the patent reform front. The bill has stalled on the Senate side. AUTM’s position is to support the compromise agreed to by the Senate judiciary committee and believes it would be helpful if universities contact their Senators and urged them to bring the bill to the floor when the August recess concludes.
We discussed at length writing, or participating in, an amicus brief in support of Myriad in the Myriad v. ACLU case. It was the sense of the board that more than 100 years of patent law should not be undone with one case. The deadline is coming up quickly, on Aug. 30, and it may be a tight race to get a brief completed. I’d like to know what you think on this issue. Please offer your comments at the end of this blog, and I’ll also be polling technology transfer office directors directly.
Stanford’s appeal for certiorari to the Supreme Court Stanford v. Roche is progressing. The Court has asked for the recommendations of the solicitor general whether the CAFC’s decision threatens the government’s rights in federally funded inventions, which is a highly encouraging sign.
The Office of the President, Executive Director and VP for Public Policy have just completed a two-day visit to Washington, DC, on which I’ll blog separately, the fourth visit to Washington by one or more board members since I took office. The AUTM board is working very hard to increase AUTM’s visibility in Washington and ensure that when issues come up that impact technology transfer AUTM is at the table.
Vicki Loise, Executive Director, led us through a planning session for 2011 activities that would address unmet needs identified in the recent member needs survey. In May, Vicki presented the results of the survey to the board. The three main areas identified for improvement were help with deal-making, make communications tools more apparent and user-friendly, and ensure there is professional development content offered for every experience level. After her presentation in May Vicki asked board members to work with their committees to start planning programs for 2011 that would work toward meeting these and other needs. Each board member reported on his or her discussion with committees and the new programs they are developing in response. It was a very impressive list of important new activities in a very short time period, and I’ll blog on this separately.
This then launched us into the budget planning process for 2011. When the AUTM budget is created the first step is for every board member to supply a plan of work that makes the case for support for the requested funds. Every activity that requires funds must be accompanied by a plan of work. The discussion at the board meeting allowed board members to hear all of the plans in one sitting and provided for brainstorming and cross-portfolio planning.
Shawn Hawkins, Vice President for Metrics and Surveys, provided a strategic overview of AUTM’s metrics and surveys activities and shared plans for changes to come. Shawn has received a lot of feedback from the recent collection of licensing activity data. As a result the committee is planning to release a very short summary of the licensing activity data with appropriate charts and graphs before the end of the year and a more in-depth report (similar to the current summary report) shortly thereafter. Now that STATT has been updated and will soon contain all data dating back to 1991 there is no need for a full report. All data will be available in STATT. Another new activity of the Metrics and Survey Committee, initiated in response to the member needs survey, is a project to collect data on academic deal terms, similar to the LES 2008 Biopharmaceutical Royalty Rates and Deal Terms Survey Report.
Vicki Loise shared with the board the summary of the visit she and I made to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in late May. There was great enthusiasm by WIPO to have, for the first time, a sitting AUTM president and its executive director visit them in person. We ended with a long list of possible collaborations that will ultimately be the core of an MOU between WIPO and AUTM. Such collaborations include joint professional development offerings, possible translations of chapters of the AUTM Technology Transfer Practice Manual, discounts for AUTM members on WIPO mediation and arbitration fees, and support for AUTM scholarships to name just a few.
From an operations standpoint the board put the final touches on the new board job descriptions , approved the budgets for the 2011 Annual Meeting and add-on courses, and reviewed the association’s finances (AUTM is having a good year by the way).
One last point—last year the board added conference call meetings to bridge the sometimes long gap between in-person meetings. This year the board is doing the same but has added a video conferencing feature to make the virtual meetings more interactive. The board meets in person in January (orientation for new board members), at the annual meeting, once in the summer and once at the end of the year and via video conference in the spring and fall. In addition, the board has started holding meetings in Chicago to cut costs and for ease of flight connections.
So, this blog picks up where Jon left off in offering you a summary of what’s going on at board meetings. Please do share your comments here or feel free to contact any board member any time if you have suggestions or questions.