A successful bilateral symposium on Industry-Academia linkages was organised through Newton-Bhabha Fund by the Royal Academy of Engineering with their Indian partners (CIPAM {DIPP}) and Department of Science and Technology’s Policy Centre) in Chandigarh on April 16 and 17, 2018. The symposium emphasised on ‘Driving Growth and Innovation through Industry Academia Partnerships and working in Systems and not Silos’. The suggestions included inter alia focusing on visual mapping of Academia and Industry linkages; building relationship between people and helping them navigate through by facilitating interactions; building case studies and spreading word to create more demand for the Academia – Industry linkages; supporting interaction through funding bottom up projects and relationships and a need to adopt a clear easy IP framework at the early stages.
A major focus area of the symposium was Technology Transfer and Patents and / or Technology Commercialization. The programme included an extensive discussions on IP commercialization and an IPR workshop. The author spoke on various ways to commercialise a technology (assignment, licensing and spin out companies), essential clauses to be covered in a technology transfer contract and the Lambert Toolkit.
Lambert toolkit has been designed to assist academic / research institutions and industrial partners who wish to carry out research projects together. The aim of the toolkit is to encourage University’s collaboration with Industry (increasing flow of IP from Universities to Businesses) and sharing of knowledge.
It is pertinent for the stakeholders to understand that owning expensive IP portfolios is not helpful unless the technology / patent is commercialized.