Office of Technology Licensing

**Office of Technology Licensing (OTL)** OTL has been strategically and collaboratively working with Stanford’s researchers, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and external partners for more than half a century. Our mission is to promote the transfer of Stanford technology for society’s use and benefit while generating unrestricted income to support research and education. The Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) was established in 1970 to manage the intellectual property assets of Stanford University. OTL evaluates, markets, and licenses technology owned by the University. OTL's mission is to encourage effective technology transfer for the public benefit as well as generating royalty income for Stanford to benefit research and education. OTL is one of the country's most active offices in the field of technology transfer from the university to industry. Our staff, most of whom are professionals engaged directly in licensing, manages over 3,000 active dockets. The OTL receives invention disclosures from Stanford faculty, staff and students. We evaluate these disclosures for their commercial possibilities, and when possible license them to industry. If the inventions are successfully licensed, cash royalties collected by OTL provide funding to the inventors' departments and schools, as well as personal shares for the inventors themselves. We typically begin the licensing process by reviewing an invention with the inventors to learn about potential applications. We then develop a licensing strategy, consider the technical and market risks, and decide whether to patent the invention. Together with the inventors, we try to find companies that might be interested in the invention and seek a product champion within a company before negotiating a licensing agreement. Although patentable inventions constitute the majority of OTL's licensing activities, we also handle copyright (software and other content), Tangible Research Property (TRP), and outgoing Material Transfer Agreements for biological materials.