For Our Inventors
Outlined in the chart below, MaRS Innovation has established an effective process to review, research, support and help transform disclosures from our member institutions into marketable products and processes. Our goal is always to build on an invention’s value, focusing on inventions in the life sciences, physical sciences, medical devices and ICT.
Driving Ideas to Market
MI’s members know that bringing novel technologies successfully to market, in a dramatically changed regulatory environment, isn’t as simple as supply meets demand, particularly for therapeutic technologies and medical devices. Commercialization of IP has become more stringent, more costly, more time consuming, and so more challenging to fund in the dollar-intensive early stages of development. Conversely, in software and green technologies, the race is often to the swiftest when it comes to commercialization.
MI’s inventors and institutions are also entering a marketplace with multiple vendors selling their wares, with a number of ways to cut the deal, and with industrial partners and investors who are seeking genuine blockbuster opportunities to justify their investment.
MI dispels commercialization confusion and scans the inventor landscape for opportunities. We consult with our institutions’ Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) and advise on when, how and where to go to the global marketplace. And we help members get there—for the greatest benefit to members’ IP and the greatest return on investment for all concerned—and that includes safeguarding inventors’ time for research and clinical care.
MI ensures that the best technologies—the best undiluted, proprietary IP—are picked, then nurtured until they are investor-ready. MI is entitled to review all IP that inventors disclose to member institutions. In just over a year (2009 to 2010), MI has reviewed 200 disclosures and accepted approximately 10 percent for further development in our commercialization pipeline.
How MI Adds Value to Invention
As commercialization agent on the disclosures that we accept from our members for further development, MaRS Innovation:
- Establishes a MI/member Agency Agreement for technology commercialization. MI’s policies fit with our member institutions’ IP policies.
- Forms a deal team of TTO; inventor; MI; and external regulatory or product-development representatives, as required.
- Bundles relevant technologies together from across our membership, where this makes science and business sense.
- Manages and funds meticulous patent filing and issuance.
- Conducts targeted business-case development and project planning.
- Funds the bridging of technology gaps to strengthen the business case.
- Provides early or pre-clinical funding for promising therapeutics;
- Leverages third-party public funding for early technology development;
- Helps to “sell” appropriate investors on the technology once the invention is “ripe.”
- Ensures that commercialization then moves forward aggressively in a milestone-based manner.
- Brings monetary benefit back to MI members.
Through the creation of a licensing deal or a start-up company, MI, its member institutions and the inventors all reap the benefits of success by way of a shared profit plan.
