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Rainforest Innovations’ fiscal year 2022 technology transfer findings clearly reflect today’s post-pandemic trend, with entrepreneurial interest from UNM faculty and investors pursuing university innovation growing again, but still noticeably below previous years.
In the year The latest annual metrics for 2022, which ended June 30, show a gradual recovery in UNM-related startup formation and university researcher disclosures.
Investors formed eight new companies to commercialize UNM technologies last year. That’s up from four in 2020 and six in 2021. But that’s still below the annual average of twelve startups between 2016 and 2019.
And new licensing deals for investors to commercialize UNM’s technology continue to be dismal, with just 41 licenses signed last year, down from 53 in 2019.
Likewise, teachers’ creative expressions rose somewhat to 94 this past year from 81 in 2021. That’s critical, because those disclosures provide the pipeline for new technologies needed to seek patents for rainforest inventions and license entrepreneurs to take them to market.
But disclosures are below the pre-pandemic average of 115 faculty innovations per year between 2016 and 2020.
And that, in turn, has led to very few patents filed by Rainforest Innovations, reflecting three years of steady decline since 2019.
“Patent application activity reflects the rate of faculty disclosures,” said Lisa Kutila, president and CEO of Rainforest Innovations. “If this goes down, the patent work will go down.”
Still, while disclosure rates are slightly higher, and startup formation is slowly picking up again, technology transfer activity is recovering, Kuuttila said.
“We’re not at the pre-pandemic stage, but things are improving,” she said. “Looking at our technology portfolio, we’re seeing a lot more activity from investors and entrepreneurs. Along with one or two calls every week, we’re now fielding a lot of new inquiries.”
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