Guide for Faculty Inventors
The quest for knowledge through research activities can result in discoveries that have a practical application. But the path from idea to reality is often unclear or can feel overwhelming to potential inventors. How can you protect your idea? How can you commercialize it? What if you prefer to let someone else take care of the business side of things? In order to answer these and other questions, Innovation and Partnerships (I+P) has revised its Guide for Faculty Inventors to help McGill researchers understand what their options are when it comes to realizing the full potential of their ideas.
McGill Spinoff Handbook
For those who have already gone through the process of invention, and are now getting serious about taking their idea to the marketplace the McGill Spinoff Handbook is essential reading. McGill is seeing a significant increase in the number of spinoffs created and the trend is only likely to grow, as more researchers and students are interested in entrepreneurship and being involved in the technology they develop. I+P works with these spinoffs in numerous ways, offering support and guidance along their journey.
Concrete examples
The following stories and links are a sample of how McGill-developed inventions have grown beyond the laboratory, with a little help from I+P and other partners:
- A McGill Professor licenses his technology (co-developed with a researcher at Université de Montréal) to a biopharmaceutical company based in France: Domain Therapeutics
- A US-based software company acquires the rights to use McGill-developed technology: Lifeline Software
- A start-up company from McGill is acquired by a major international corporation: Carbicrete
- McGill research into an orphan drug enables a startup company to attract new investment: Laurent Pharma