Open Bench IP

Discovery workbook

Live notes for the Emory conversation

Capture notes by typing or by voice under each discovery section, in the meeting or right after. Notes save automatically. When ready, generate a copy of your notes with the questions, a 1-7 maturity rating for each section against the benchmarking study, and a strategic recommendation for what to do next.

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1. Current state of IP policy

  1. 1.Walk me through what actually happens, step by step, from the day a faculty member discloses an invention to the day a license or founder agreement is signed.CORE
  2. 2.What is the median time that process takes today, not the target on paper?CORE
  3. 3.Where in that process do most disclosures stall or get abandoned?
  4. 4.How many invention disclosures does the medical school receive in a typical year, and how many become a license, spinout, or startup?
  5. 5.Is there a standard, published IP policy faculty can read before they disclose, or is it negotiated case by case?

What good practice looks like

  • A published, predictable disclosure-to-license timeline, held to as an operational deadline rather than an aspiration
  • Most disclosures convert to a license, spinout, or founder agreement rather than stalling in committee
  • A written IP policy faculty can read before disclosing, not case-by-case negotiation

2. Ownership, equity, and licensing terms

  1. 1.What does Emory typically take in a spinout deal — equity, royalty, both, and in what range?CORE
  2. 2.Are terms fairly standard across departments, or does the medical school negotiate differently than engineering or business?
  3. 3.Is there a fast-track or express license option for lower-stakes inventions, or does everything go through full committee review?
  4. 4.How much room does a faculty founder actually have to negotiate terms, versus a fixed template they can take or leave?CORE
  5. 5.What happens to IP if a company fails — does it revert to the university, the founder, or stay with investors?
  6. 6.When faculty work with outside companies or federally funded collaborations, how are background IP, newly created IP, and improvements defined before the work begins?CORE
  7. 7.What Emory terms, if any, tend to become sticking points when an outside investor diligences a faculty spinout?CORE

What good practice looks like

  • A fast-track or express license path for lower-stakes inventions (dual-track disclosure)
  • Founder-equity-first terms rather than heavy upfront cash licensing fees
  • Reasonably consistent terms across departments rather than fully ad hoc negotiation

3. Faculty incentives and career impact

  1. 1.Does founding a company count toward tenure and promotion review, and is there a workable dual-role path for staying on faculty while running it?CORE
  2. 2.Does founding or advising a company count toward tenure and promotion review, and if so, how is it weighed against publications and grants?
  3. 3.Is there a formal reduced-load, sabbatical, or dual-role policy for faculty who want to run a company while staying on faculty?
  4. 4.What non-dilutive funding exists internally to get a proof-of-concept to the point where outside investors will take a meeting?
  5. 5.How long does conflict-of-interest review typically take once a faculty member wants to found or advise a company tied to their research?
  6. 6.What is the biggest reason you see faculty decide not to pursue commercialization, even when they believe in the idea?CORE

What good practice looks like

  • Company formation and licensing activity count toward tenure and promotion review
  • A formal reduced-load, sabbatical, or dual-role policy exists for founder faculty
  • Non-dilutive gap funding is available internally, roughly in the $25k-$150k range
  • Conflict-of-interest review has a published, predictable timeline

4. Physician-scientists and clinical IP specifically

  1. 1.Are there IP or conflict-of-interest rules specific to clinician-founders that differ from basic science faculty?
  2. 2.How does clinical trial data, patient data, or device development get handled differently in terms of IP ownership?
  3. 3.How do you balance a physician’s clinical duties with the time demands of founding a company?
  4. 4.Where have you seen promising faculty ventures run into enough friction that the founder considered building elsewhere?

What good practice looks like

  • Distinct, clearly documented COI and IP handling for clinician-founders vs. basic science faculty
  • Clear, written ownership rules for clinical trial and patient-derived data

5. Students, trainees, and non-faculty inventors

  1. 1.How does IP ownership change when a grad student, postdoc, or resident is a co-inventor rather than the faculty member themselves?
  2. 2.Are trainees included in equity or royalty splits, and is that policy written down or handled case by case?
  3. 3.What support exists for a trainee who wants to found a company around their own research after they leave the lab?

What good practice looks like

  • A written policy for trainee equity or royalty inclusion, not case-by-case discretion
  • A defined support path for a trainee founding a company after leaving the lab

6. Resources, ecosystem, and support

  1. 1.What internal resources exist today — incubator space, gap funding, mentorship, legal support — for a faculty member who wants to start a company?
  2. 2.How connected is the medical school’s entrepreneurship office to Atlanta’s broader startup and investor ecosystem?
  3. 3.Where do most Emory Med spinouts end up raising their first outside capital from?
  4. 4.What peer institutions do you think do this exceptionally well?CORE

What good practice looks like

  • Internal incubator space, gap funding, mentorship, and legal support all exist and are actually used
  • Strong, active connective tissue to the local investor and startup ecosystem

7. An investment fund and a venture home

  1. 1.Does Emory or the medical school have anything like an evergreen fund that takes equity in faculty spinouts, separate from licensing terms?
  2. 2.If not, who internally would decide whether to build one, and what would they need to see to consider it?
  3. 3.Is there physical space today — an incubator, studio, or shared office — where a faculty founder’s early team can actually work?
  4. 4.Nebraska runs its commercialization arm as a separate affiliated nonprofit rather than a university department. Would a structure like that be realistic here, or is there a reason it wouldn’t fit?
  5. 5.If a faculty founder’s company fails, is there a defined path back to a full academic role, or does that depend entirely on the individual case?
  6. 6.What would it take for staying on faculty while building a company to feel like the easy path, rather than the exception?CORE

What good practice looks like

  • An evergreen fund that takes equity in spinouts alongside licensing terms (the Nebraska / NUtech pattern)
  • Physical venture-home space for early founder teams, on or near campus
  • A defined, dignified path back to a full academic role if a venture doesn’t work out

8. Vision and openness to change

  1. 1.If you could change one thing about the system, what would it be?CORE
  2. 2.Which protections are genuinely important to Emory, and where do you think the process could move faster without compromising them?
  3. 3.Would Emory Med be open to piloting a faster track or revised terms for a defined category of inventions?
  4. 4.Who else should be in this conversation?CORE

What good practice looks like

  • Explicit institutional appetite to pilot a faster track or revised terms
  • Named internal stakeholders willing to sponsor structural change

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Builds a copy of your notes and the questions, a 1-7 maturity rating per section against the benchmarking study, and a strategic recommendation from everything captured above.

Notes and the generated report only persist once this project is live on the cloud — in the in-editor preview they reset on reload.