<p>Ok, with regard to this business of patents, I agree with gfg. A little perspective is in order it seems to me. Patents can be had for items with very little significance as he relates and this can frequently be a lot of nothing (except marketing material) for a university or something really special and unusual. In Florida, the two most noteworthy patents that come to mind are the commercial process that enabled the widespread use of [Taxol</a> (Florida State)](<a href=“Commercialization | FSU Office of Research”>Commercialization | FSU Office of Research) in the fight against breast and possibly other cancers and [Gatorade</a> (University of Florida)](<a href=“http://www.gatorade.com/history/]Gatorade”>http://www.gatorade.com/history/). There are many more, but they pale in comparison to the impact of these items. I recall that Taxol was and still may be (I’ll let the resident MDs chime in if they decide to educate us) the most prescribed anti-cancer drug ever. The professor at FSU who won the decades-long race to perfect this process is Dr. Holton, who now has an entire floor of the new and huge Chemistry Building at FSU. The royalties earned by FSU from Taxol were staggering and for a time had FSU up with the Top 20 national schools in terms of money from patents. Gatorade has earned UF millions as well, but less than Taxol. I’ve heard nothing regarding UCF’s patents, which as far as I can tell come almost totally from the Photonics program they have.</p>
<p>In many areas of product development it is years and years of slow and tedious research to maybe, if ever, have a Taxol-type patent come your way.</p>
<p>Interesting site DrewCool. You can clearly see the dropoff in age as both UF (1st) and FSU (2nd) are in the tens of thousands of funded projects compared to UCF (3rd) with only a fraction of that, although they lead every other Florida university. </p>
<p>While the UCF College of Optics and Photonics does produce many research patents, it largely shares the load with Engineering, Health Sciences, the FSEC, etc. In fact, the FSEC (Florida Solar Energy Center) was the first ever state-supported energy organization in Florida. So much has come of the FSEC that Senator Bill Nelson actually wrote a book about its history.</p>
<p>Here are some examples of significant patented projects by UCF:</p>
<p>Also, Home Depot’s highest-selling ceiling fan was a product of UCF researchers. Over a million units have been sold in the U.S. alone through Hampton Bay.</p>
<p>You definitely make a good point where as age of a university should be taken into consideration as to research discoveries/patents. Also size should probably be considered too as with UNF and others. If you go to the advanced search(see link below) and choose school and skip the next box and select issued for patents it appears UCF has some great ones. Other people on this board probably know more than I do on this or could comment better but if research can be measured for outcome by new discoveries that result in licenses/patents than according to this site UCF is 3rd in the state barely behind USF. I would say from this information it could be stated that UCF and USF are definitely strong research universities. I think we have a lot of good schools in Florida but at times it seems some may be unfairly underrated.</p>
<p>But if you click on the link for each university, it will show you the entire list of all licensing opprotunities (issued and applied):</p>
<p>University of Florida 431
University of South Florida 329
Florida State University 188
University of Central Florida 80
University of Miami 56
Florida Atlantic University 54
Florida International University 17
University of North Florida 10
Florida A&M University 0</p>
<p>I believe it says though issued licensing/patents is as followed</p>
<p>Florida A&M University 0
Florida Atlantic University29
Florida International University11
Florida State University158
University of Central Florida80
University of Florida 3
University of Miami 5
University of North Florida 2
University of South Florida 98</p>
<p>That’s what licensing opprotunities are I believe. From what I understand, these university professors come up with crazy ideas, patent it, and maybe even do a proof of concept. Then they publish these patents to try to sell them to investors who think they can spend money maturing the idea into a real product. They make a deal with the investor and the school gets royalties if the invention makes money in the market place.</p>
<p>So the licensing opportunity starts off with a patent.</p>
<p>I’m guessing, but it seems these are opportunities ready for investment, somewhat more developed or marketable than a mere patent. Consequently, to equate them only to a patent sells them a bit short.</p>
<p>The top-level summary appears to have a glitch with regard to total number count…you need to click-through to the underlying data to see the actual number of technologies that are available for license. I believe <em>all</em> those items are either patented or in the patent-applied for process.</p>
<p>Yes. So this kinda goes back to what I was saying about patenting quality technologies that investors are willing to shell out big bucks for. It’s more than just how many patents you have.</p>
<p>Btw, UF Office of Research sends me a periodical that has some of their coolest inventions that have attracted investors to continue maturing the technologies. This one is my favorite because of its simplicity and the inspiration it came from:</p>
<p>UCF researchers found a way to utilize nanoparticles to prevent and treat cell damage and disease. It uses a similar idea, as the cerium oxide prototype serves as a strong antioxidant because of its crystal structure. In fact, both the National Science Foundation and U.S. News and World Report recently featured the new UCF discovery.</p>
<p>I went with my sister and family to tour UNF about 4 weeks ago. We didn’t see any ducks on the campus. About 2 years ago when I toured UNF for myself, there where ducks all over the place. I was going to ask the student tour leader last visit what happened to all the ducks but got sidetracked and forgot to ask him. Either the ducks were hiding or UNF hauled off all the ducks…I didn’t see any last month.</p>
