Last month, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) released the summary report of its “AUTM US Licensing Activity Survey: FY2006.” According to the survey, US universities, hospitals and research institutions received $45.4 billion during fiscal 2006, a 7.3% increase over the previous year. The average annual funding growth rate since 1997 is 8.6%. Sixty-eight percent of research funding came from federal sources and 7% came from industrial sources; industrial funding has stayed at this level since 2003. During the year, 15,908 US patents were filed and 3,255 were approved. AUTM members managed 12,672 income-generating licenses and signed 4,963 new licenses; 697 new products related to current licenses were commercialized. Five hundred and fifty-three companies were spun out of university-licensed research. The largest amount of licenses, 48.7%, signed in fiscal 2006 were issued to small companies, followed by large companies and startups, with 33.2% and 15.4%, respectively. Sixty-three percent of these licenses were nonexclusive, while 37% were exclusive.

Source: AUTM