Taking Publicly Funded Innovations to the Marketplace: Lessons from Germany

We look at two mechanisms in Germany that concern patenting and licensing of publicly funded science. The first is the function of Ipal GmbH which undertakes patenting and licensing of technologies originating in the universities in Berlin and the second is that of the Max Planck Innovations (MPI), nodal centre for technology transfer of the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG)). This article presents case studies of patenting and licensing practices at the Humboldt University of Berlin (against the Ipal GmbH model) and those at MPG (the MPI model). The analysis is structured around core issues pertaining to IPR and academic research, science-industry interface and technology transfer.