A joint venture named "360IP-CSU" by Central South University (CSU) and 360ip Pte Ltd is under registration this month, and the cooperation marks a breakthrough for CSU in commercialization of intellectual property.

CSU is located in Changsha, capital city of Hunan province, while 360ip was established by Battelle, a worldwide nonprofit independent research and development organization.

In October 2008, CSU and 360ip reached an agreement in which the university will provide its leading research innovations, intellectual property and brain support while the company offers licensing services, commercialization management and direct investments to maximize commercial outcomes.

In addition, 360ip injects $20 million to fund research of CSU.

"Cooperation with 360ip this time is a new attempt to advance the deployment of technology innovations into the global market," said Huang Boyun, president of CSU and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"360ip helps to explore the commercial value of our research achievements, and outcomes from the joint venture will relieve the fund shortage of our new researches, which guarantees a sustainable development," Huang said.

Battelle has a network of more than 120 institutes all over the world. Jeffrey Wadsworth, executive vice president of Battelle, said in the signing ceremony that Battelle and 360ip will offer their extensive resources to "support the success of advancing commercial outcomes for promising new innovations".

"It's our mutual objective to find out the best way to combine intellectual property and capital so as to maximize returns of our research achievements," Tang Xinxiao, office director of technology management for the university, told China Business Weekly.

Tang is busy with the registration procedures of the new joint venture. CSU will continue to possess the ownership of these transferred intellectual property rights.

As early as July 2007, Wadsworth and Glenn Kline, executive president of 360ip, arrived in China searching for partners among Chinese universities on commercialization of intellectual property. Eventually, CSU entered their sights.

According to Tang, Battelle and 360ip did not choose CSU by accident. Just as Kline said in the signing ceremony, "What attracts us most are the fruitful research innovations of CSU."

From 1995 to 2008, CSU received 64 honors from National Award for Natural Sciences, National Award for Technological Invention and National Award for Science and Technology Progress, the major three state-level awards related to science and technology in China.

It ranks second among Chinese universities.

In the last five years, CSU has completed 3,759 research projects, and its research funds exceeded one billion yuan in 2008.

To protect intellectual property rights, CSU set up a special institute to help researchers apply for patents. In addition, the university tries actively to search for corporate partners to put research achievements into production. At present, the implementation rate of applied patents has reached 70 percent.

"CSU is a university at the service of enterprises and their production and this is a distinct advantage of our academic researches," Tang said.

The return from these efforts is obvious. "Although the world economy has been seriously hit by the financial crisis since 2008, the hi-tech products based on our research achievements develop quite well," Tang said.

"For example, the brake shoe made of composite materials developed by President Huang and his team has been exported to Europe. So far, we have received orders worth 300 million yuan," he said.

(China Daily 05/18/2009 page11)