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The University of Arizona often elects ownership of inventions made by its researchers in order provide an orderly way of licensing those innovations to entrepreneurial companies either for immediate use or for further commercial development and "productization."
Licenses for University of Arizona intellectual property are negotiated and managed by the Office of Technology Transfer. License particulars vary from technology to technology but are always intended to incorporate commercially reasonable terms that attempt to make a licensing opportunity attractive to entrepreneurial companies while ensuring appropriate financial return for the public investment in the University's research mission.
Most UA innovations are made with the help of federal research funds, in which cases federal law requires that, when feasible, the University to give licensing preference to small companies.
For an exclusive license, the University seeks a company that has the commitment and financial and technical resources to further develop the innovation and bring it to market in a timely manner. Committing a fledgling technology exclusively to a single company means that other companies will not have the same opportunity, so the University sometimes uses formal selection criteria, such as:
Exclusive licensees are typically asked to reimburse the University's direct patent costs for the licensed technology, and to provide other financial returns to the University in the form of reasonable royalties, milestone payments as the value of the technology becomes more concretely demonstrated, and diligence payments or annual rental fees that take into account the opportunity costs of licensing the technology exclusively.
Criteria for a non-exclusive license are less stringent, but usually still require that the licensee show an ability to commercialize the technology.
