Intellectual Property Law

IP Database Highlights Maryland Technologies

By Brian Wm. Higgin

     Maryland tops the nation in research and development spending at universities, government laboratories, and other private entities and institutions, so it should come as no suprise that Maryland has lots of intellectual property that is available for commercialization. The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO), a Maryland State government corporation, is tasked with the responsibility of trying to transfer all of that technology into the private sector in Maryland and elsewhere. 

     Enter Invenio-IP®, a database developed by the University of Maryland through a grant from TEDCO.  Invenio is a free, web-based, searchable access point containing patented and non-patented technologies available for commercialization. The database includes not only technologies developed by Maryland entities and institutions, but those developed outside the state (for now, only Virginia and DC):

• Avanti Therapeutics
• College of William and Mary
• Georgetown University
• Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (Laurel, MD)
• Johns Hopkins University (MD)
• US Army Medical Research & Materiel Command
• University of Maryland Baltimore County
• University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
• University of Maryland, Baltimore
• University of Maryland, College Park
  

     Don't expect to find only state of the art technologies in the Invenio database. I ran a search for "drug" and was presented with 291 technologies, some of which was patented several years ago. The web interface is not the best I have seen, but it gets you the information quickly. One nice feature is that you can set up an alert that will ping you when technologies matching your keywords are added to the database.

Full post as published by Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog on January 17, 2008 (boomark / email).