EXPERT VIEWS: Prof. Karen Hersey on "Experiences of AUTM"

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This post comes from Prof Karen Hersey's Building Networks: The National and International Experiences of AUTM In Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: A Handbook of Best Practices.

Prof Karen Hersey is Professor of Law at the Pierce Law and a past President of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). She is a former Senior Counsel for intellectual property at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1992, she served as the academic community's representative to a congressionally mandated Department of Defense Government-Industry Advisory Committee on Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software to study and recommend changes in the Department of Defense Procurement Regulations in the areas of technical data and computer software.

She publishes widely in the area of intellectual property law as it impacts institutions of higher education. In addition to offering courses dealing with technology transfer for nonprofit organizations and intellectual property management in universities, she is also the co founder of the International Technology Transfer Institute at Pierce Law.

 

The following is an abstract of  "Building Networks: The National and International Experiences of AUTM"

Developing and implementing best practices in intellectual property (IP) management requires several critical inputs, and building networks is among the most important. The experience of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) serves as an excellent example of how to build and maintain such networks. The important lessons learned as AUTM grew and expanded its networks are broadly applicable to building dynamic, productive, and sustainable networks anywhere in the world. Furthermore, since AUTM is an association of individual, rather than institutional or organizational members, it functions all the more as a catalyst for networking. Networking provides two important benefits. First, it facilitates relationships between individuals with varied experience, expertise, and skill sets, encouraging individuals to contribute to each other's professional expertise. Second, the network itself contributes to the overall quality of group performance. Working through networks, practitioners exchange ideas and experiences to form best practices that become performance standards for individuals and their institutions. Networks thereby contribute to building IP management capacity at both the individual and institutional levels, and this capacity building then feeds back to further support and expand the network. This chapter considers the networking practices established by AUTM. It charts the organization's growth over a period of 30 years from a small group of U.S. and Canadian patent managers to an association of more than 3,400 members from countries on every continent. As the story of AUTM demonstrates, networks can begin locally and gradually expand to operate on a national, regional, and even international scale. However, as AUTM has shown, the organization itself must begin with--and steadfastly maintain--a clear and focused central mission.

To continue reading the entire piece click here.

 

The same can be cited as:

Hersey K. 2007. Building Networks: The National and International Experiences of AUTM. In Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: A Handbook of Best Practices (eds. A Krattiger, RT Mahoney, L Nelsen, et al.). MIHR: Oxford, U.K., and PIPRA: Davis, U.S.A. Available online at www.ipHandbook.org.

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This page contains a single entry by Shashwat Purohit published on November 12, 2008 5:15 AM.

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