News from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research

Office of Technology Transfer

This term has been punctuated with a number of challenging and important meetings and events, among which are:

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) held a national conference on November 26-27 in Ottawa on the theme "Capturing the Benefits." Among the 200 participants were many smaller universities and colleges. McGill's delegation included the OTT director, who gave a talk on technology transfer networks, and the associate vice-principal (research) and the vice-principal (research).

There were also some government and a few industry representatives. Presentations and debates relating to ownership of intellectual property, harmonization of universities' rules and regulations, and issues relating to spin-off and conflicts of commitments generated considerable interest.

It was the first Canadian forum on intellectual property and the interest stemmed from the recent creation of the Canadian Expert Panel on Intellectual Property Commercialization. One of the highlights of this conference was a striking presentation from Dr. Kevin Lynch, assistant deputy minister with Industry Canada, who revealed the productivity gap existing between Canada and other OECD countries, including the U.S., and inferred that innovation, therefore universities, could play a significant role in meeting the Canadian catch-up challenge.

The challenge is whether the universities will or won't accept becoming an engine of economic development, not as a primary mission, but as a result of their unique teaching and research mission.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Group (CIPG) met in Ottawa on November 25. This group is made up of OTT representatives from the 10 most research-intensive universities in Canada. These bi-annual meetings allow for a better harmonization among OTTs across Canada.

The BLEUs (Bureaux de liaison entreprises-universités) from Quebec universities recently released their annual metrics. Did you know that Quebec-based OTTs processed 1,452 contracts this year and managed to get 23 licenses and to generate almost 20 spin-offs? The number and value of contracts appear on the low side for McGill (180 contracts this year valued at 10 million dollars). The message is that, with the researcher's collaboration, we may attract more sponsored research contracts from industry in the future but we also should account for our internal accounting practices since OTT does not include RGO contracts nor the industrial portion of collaborative grants, which are contracts.

The definite good news is that we reaped 30 percent of granted licences, 42 percent of spin-offs and had a tremendous score on the total number of reports of inventions, that reached 104 last year at McGill. Thus OTT is thankful to the collective work that allowed such results, despite the additional pressures that it entails and for which we are trying to gather the necessary support for additional resources to better serve the community.

OTT and the Faculty of Management have initiated a new pilot program involving two teams of MBA students actively developing a business plan for an OTT potential spin-off. This program is a first attempt at McGill to get both OTT and the Faculty of Management to collaborate and provide students with real-life situations and the possibility of being associated with a new venture and of influencing its beginning. We hope that this program will become more formalized and provide a unique training ground for those involved.

NRC through the IRAP program has provided the Macdonald Campus with an IRAP (Industry Research Assistance Program) presence for many years, in collaboration with OTT. Our last IRAP Officer, Bernice Mills, was recently replaced by Pamela Presley, who will start with us in January. Ms. Presley has a BSc from Macdonald Campus and has extensive industrial experience with firms such as Bush Boake Allen Canada Inc. and Quest International. We are pleased to welcome Ms. Presley in this challenging new function. She will be one of about 60 ITAs (Industrial Technology Advisors) located in various Canadian universities and one of 240 such ITAs across the land. This will allow McGill to branch into the NRC network and to get closer to small businesses, their natural clients.

Finally, OTT, as you well know, is not only dealing with contract issues, but also caters to a number of other issues that are not as well known to our community. These issues may involve setting up contacts for our faculty members with industry, resolving issues of conflict or of concern, involving graduate students in their relationships with industrial partners, structuring spin-offs or finding appropriate partners for their technological development, structuring chairs (we have a great need and many opportunities in this area), promoting McGill know-how and supporting the McGill administration with respect to policy issues. In the latter case, our multiple contacts with our Canadian counterparts are very useful.