HEFCE is inviting evidence from higher education institutions, business, and other users and professional bodies to contribute to a guide to good practice in knowledge exchange. The guide will be aimed at higher education institutions to help them to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their knowledge exchange activities and performance.
New interactive maps released by HEFCE describe the size, industry sector distribution and characteristics of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across England.
This is a timely production of an evidence base. UK Universities are already implementing a variety of strategies to support adoption of knowledge by SMEs and drive local growth. This dataset will help even further focus those strategies even further on local absorptive capacity and local need.
Some technology held and used by Universities, including for research collaborations and teaching, or licensed by University tech transfer companies, and some consultancy activity does have the potential to be misused. It is therefore subject to military non-proliferation export controls by the UK and EU and other countries, backed up by criminal law (involving fines, legal costs and prison sentences of up to 10 years).Compliance with Export Controls is a serious obligation but it is manageable.
Briefly, the UK regime takes a 2 pronged approach:
The Technology Transfer Offices of Edinburgh, Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and UCL have collaborated to produce a briefing paper, "UK University Technology Transfer : behind the headlines".
The document, available here, explains the role and achievements of TTOs, and answers some frequently asked questions. It is intended to be a useful resource for government, industry and other sectors who interact with university TTOs.
HMRC announced in November that it would put forward a proposal to end the UK's relatively new 'Patent Box' scheme, which currently allows income from the commercial exploitation of intellectual property (IP) to be taxed at 10%. The announcement was in response to German concerns about artificial shifting of profits between European countries.
The Autumn Statement has been issued and the Twitter-sphere moves on, so the process of looking at the fine details in terms of figures and facts and considering their implications can begin. We are still waiting for the Science & Innovation Strategy paper, of course, which was meant to be issued along with the Statement but should now be published next week.
The Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) & The UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~ IRC) Enhancing Value Task Force publishes a groundbreaking report identifying five critical findings after mapping the R&D landscape of the UK.
The report, The UK R&D Landscape, is the first in a series which aims to identify and address the key issues in enhancing the innovation and the productivity impact of UK R&D.
The Task Force has made a number of key findings:
This policy brief, entitled The Rise of the Micro-Multinational: How Freelancers and Technology-Savvy Start-Ups are Driving Growth, Jobs and Innovation, sets out nine recommendations for policymakers to lay a foundation for future prosperity in Europe and North America.
The new guide provides advice and information to universities to help them understand how they can best use their institution's Intellectual Property. This can be an invention, trade mark, original design or the application of a good idea.
Income generated through the commercial use of Intellectual Property rights can be worth millions of pounds. In 2009/10 £84 million was generated directly from IP at Universities.
Launching the guide, Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Wilcox said:
Brunswick Material Transfer Agreement
The Brunswick Group has developed a Material Transfer Agreement for use between two universities to facilitate routine transfer of materials between academic institutions. The aim is to remove the need to spend time on drafting and negotiation in the majority of cases, and to avoid the embarrassing situation where a provider of material asks for MTA terms that they would not accept as a recipient.