turning a professor's patent into someone else's IPO.
means the process of moving inventions from research labs (usually universities or government) into commercial products through licensing, startups, or partnerships.
from formalized in the US by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which let universities keep patent rights to federally funded research instead of the government owning everything, unleashing a wave of university licensing offices.
stanford pagerank — licensed to google, netted stanford stock worth millions
gatorade — university of florida invented it, still collects royalties
cohen-boyer patent — stanford and ucsf gene-splicing patent, launched biotech industry 1980
moderna mrna tech — built on nih and university licensed platform research