How much income is derived by universities from licensing federally assisted inventions, and how is that money used?
The 1992 GAO survey of thirty-five top NIH and NSF grantees showed that for the two-year period 1989 and 1990, those universities received a total of $113M from licensing of which $82M was for licenses of NIH/NSF funded inventions. To place these figures into context, the invention income was less than 1% of the research support provided to universities by NIH and NSF. The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) gathered 1991-1992 data from U.S. and Canadian institutions engaged in technology transfer. 98 U.S. universities provided gross figures on their royalty income. For 1992, royalties amounted $172M. This figure needs to be adjusted for legal fees, amounting to $37M. In addition, the survey does not translate into dollar terms the amount of staff time expended to manage the process. Such figures tend to be meaningless in the abstract, lacking the context of institutional, federal and industry funding which provided the basis for the invention disclosures. In reality,
