In United States and other developed economies, technology transfer is a very important issue. The success of technology transfer is related with industrial upgrade and the development of economics. It is also a key mechanism to efficiently use those research achievements of universities to commercialize and transfer those valuable technologies. There are many research institutions and agricultural technology research organizations in Taiwan. Because the government support the research organizations continuously, Taiwan¡¦s universities has many valuable research results. In the age valuable Intellectual Pattern Right, the formal intellectual property rights, including patents, technological transfer, and the technological licensing, are still little in Taiwan¡¦s universities. So this research¡¦s main idea is to find a ideal model of the technology licensing office based on the processes of technology commercialization and u.s universities¡¦ experiences. The method utilized for collecting data in this thesis was to interview with the experts, researchers and governmental officers to gather the primary information. The other was to gather the secondary information, including research papers, books, theses, and magazines from the On-line databases and libraries. This thesis analyzes the technology transfer system and management policies based on five different points of view, i.e., the initial stage of technology development, the incubation of new technology, the resource attainment , demo of new technology, and the promotion. The important result observed from the thesis is that the degree of commercialization of the research results is not enough. In addition, Taiwan¡¦s technology transfer center just provide limited function. So, there are only few patents and royalties from technological transfer and low ratio of successful commercialization in Taiwan¡¦s universities. Meanwhile, most technology transfer in Taiwan happened through informal channel. So, the effects on technology transfer centers are not so strong. Three suggestions are drawn from the thesis: (1). The IPR conception of researchers is not enough. Researchers should be encouraged to apply pattens and IPR to improve the quality and quantity of Taiwan¡¦s intellectual property. (2). The technology transfer center should clarify the value of the research results and play the role of connection between industry and research institutions. (3). The regulations of IPR in Taiwan should be quickly updated to catch up the fast advancement of technologies.. Furthermore, the infrastructures of agriculture-related IPR management system should be built-up well. keyword¡Gtechnology transfer center¡Buniversity technology transfer¡BIntellectual Patten Right¡Btechnology licensing¡Btechnology commercialization.

This thesis presents a commercial outcome prediction system (CPS) capable of predicting the likely future monetary return that would be generated by an invention. The CPS is designed to be used by university technology transfer offices for invention assessment purposes, and is based on the data from their historical invention cases. It is aimed at improving technology transfer offices' invention assessment performance. Using qualitative critical factors suggested by literature. a prototype CPS based on decision tree induction was developed. The prediction performance achieved by the prototype CPS was unreliable. Three surveys with various technology transfer offices were then performed, and the findings were incorporated into a final version of the CPS, which was based on neural networks. Subject to information obtained in the surveys, a number of potentially predictive attributes were proposed to form part of the predictor variables for the CPS. The CPS starts with a number of data reduction operations (based on principal component analysis and decision tree techniques), which identify the critical predictor variables. The CPS then uses five neural-network training algorithms to generate candidate classifiers, upon which the final classification is based. The prediction results achieved by the CPS were good and reliable. Additionally, the data reduction operations successfully captured the most discriminative invention attributes. The research demonstrated the potential or using the CPS for invention assessment. However, it requires sufficient historical data from the technology transfer office using it to provide accurate assessments.

This study explains the rise and fall of the Innovations Foundation, the University of Toronto's first office dedicated to the transfer of university-developed technologies to industry. Drawing on extensive archival research, ten interviews with key informants, and other sources, the case study traces the evolution of the Foundation from its launch in 1980 to its closure in 2006. The study delineates three distinct business models under which the Foundation operated from 1980 to 1990, 1990 to 1999, and 1999 to 2006. The reasons for the adoption and failure of each model are explored and a historically grounded, context-sensitive explanation of the university's decision to dismantle the Foundation in 2006 is provided. This explanation emphasizes the importance of managing unrealistic expectations for Canadian university technology transfer, and adds weight to a growing consensus on the importance of historical path-dependence as a conceptual tool for understanding the persistence of differentials in technology transfer performance among universities.

This study explains the rise and fall of the Innovations Foundation, the University of Toronto's first office dedicated to the transfer of university-developed technologies to industry. Drawing on extensive archival research, ten interviews with key informants, and other sources, the case study traces the evolution of the Foundation from its launch in 1980 to its closure in 2006. The study delineates three distinct business models under which the Foundation operated from 1980 to 1990, 1990 to 1999, and 1999 to 2006. The reasons for the adoption and failure of each model are explored and a historically grounded, context-sensitive explanation of the university's decision to dismantle the Foundation in 2006 is provided. This explanation emphasizes the importance of managing unrealistic expectations for Canadian university technology transfer, and adds weight to a growing consensus on the importance of historical path-dependence as a conceptual tool for understanding the persistence of differentials in technology transfer performance among universities.

Data to understand the inventiveness and technology transfer process for medical devices in India is lacking and majority of medical devices are imported. The presence of a medical school in a university system is expected to enhance healthcare inventiveness. Universities with medical schools have 2.5 times more R&D expenditure and productivity than universities without medical schools. Therefore, the presence or absence of medical schools in universities serves as interesting samples for technology transfer analysis. This thesis focuses on medical device inventiveness and technology transfer office efficiencies of American universities. Three sample sets are used. The first is data from 1242 US universities, of which 734 had medical schools, and their Technology Transfer Office (TTO) productivity from years 1999-2008. The second consisted of 5693 medical device patents filed at USPTO by universities worldwide during years 1999-2008, including US universities. The third consisted of 32 cochlear implant university based patents from 7 primary patent classes in USPTO. Universities involved in medical device research (MDU) and universities not involved in medical device research (NMDU) are compared in our study to understand differences in their technology transfer activities. Initially, Social network analysis is used to understand the interrelatedness of technologies in university based research using patent classes. Degree, betweenness and closeness centrality of 32 cochlear implant patents (out of 345 overall filed patents in USPTO including corporate filings), showed the importance of universities’ R&D contribution to the overall evolution of cochlear implant technology. Dynamics in terms of emergence and disappearance of technologies (represented by US patent classes in years 1977 to 2012), are identified. Our study highlights that universities' research focus within medical device research is confined to few technology classes like surgery, drugs and body treating compositions for therapeutic purposes and image analysis. In these technology areas, universities share of patent holding is found to be more compared to other medical device technologies. Multivariate OLS and binary logistic regressions are used to understand university characteristics that influences amount of patenting by universities. Our study attempts to delineate and highlight university characteristics that may influence amount of patenting in general, i.e., across all technologies and specifically those university characteristics that may influence more patenting in medical device technologies. Our study establishes that university characteristic variables like age, public/private ownership and research productivity influences amount of patenting by universities in general, across all technologies. However, additional university characteristics like presence of medical school and expenditure on legal fees are found influencing amount of patenting in medical device technologies by universities. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used in our attempt to understand the efficiency of universities in transferring their technologies to industries. Interesting insights are obtained on observing slack obtained during DEA. Our study highlights that some universities may have to reduce their research expenditure in large scales and number of employees working in their technology transfer offices in large scales compared to other universities in order to improve their efficiency in technology transfer process. Our study establishes that in order to improve technology transfer efficiencies, MDUs with higher research expenditure may have to reduce their research expenditure in large volumes compared to universities with lesser research expenditures. However, these MDUs may not be required to greatly reduce their technology transfer employees as compared to universities with lesser research expenditures, in order to improve their technology transfer efficiencies. Moreover, MDUs generating more number of invention disclosures and receiving more faculty awards annually can increase their patenting, licensing and startups in smaller volumes, in order to improve their technology transfer efficiencies, as compared to universities generating lesser invention disclosures and receiving lesser faculty awards, which can increase their patenting and licensing in larger volumes.