Funding agreement to help commercialise ideas
A new agreement with UK-listed company IP Group will help get intellectual property to market.
The University of Sydney is one of nine Australasian universities to form a new partnership with a global leader in the commercialisation of scientific innovation developed at research universities.
The agreement with IP Group plc will see at least $200 million invested in finding and developing companies involved in disruptive innovation. It involves all of Australia’s Group of Eight universities and the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
IP Group will make the investment over 10 years to fund investments in spin-out companies based on the intellectual property (IP) developed by academics at the nine universities. The London Stock Exchange listed company believes the universities it has partnered with represent a significant source of world-class and potentially disruptive research.
This new fund will back the brilliant ideas of our researchers and help take them to market.
The agreements with each university are for an initial 20-year term, and seek to support the best and brightest researchers to translate their findings into new and innovative ways to improve the economic and social wellbeing of Australasians
“The business model we are using is similar to the model IP Group has used successfully in the UK and the US; providing business-building expertise, capital, networks, recruitment and business support,” said IP Group Chief Executive Alan Aubrey. “We believe the model is ideally suited to the Australian and New Zealand markets and represents a significant commercial opportunity for all those involved.”
The new relationship with the IP group adds another major source of early commercialisation funding to the University, said Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Duncan Ivison.
“We know it is often hardest to get funding at the earliest stages of the development of an idea or invention,” he said. “This new fund will back the brilliant ideas of our researchers and help take them to market.”
The investment is being supported through a capital raising, which has seen the participation of new shareholders, Telstra Super Pty Ltd, Temasek and M&G as well as existing shareholders Invesco, Woodford and Lansdowne.