Intellectual property: the cat's meow?

With quotes like "patent or perish" and "IP is the cat's meow," one might guess that Arizona State University [ASU] hired India's R. A. Mashelkar.

A WebDevil article noted: Last year about $782,000 was spent in securing patents for ASU research, but revenue generated from IP totaled $3.9 million, said Andrew Wooten, vice president and managing director of health ventures at Arizona Technology Enterprises.

Also:

Jeffrey LaBelle, a postdoctoral researcher at Biodesign, tried patenting an invention through AzTE.

LaBelle said the push for IP is encouraging researchers to spend years developing products for commercialization, rather than devoting that time just to research.

"If you start gearing products for industry, you're not going to be making or breaking research," he said.

That brings up the question as to what the purpose of university research should be, Ben Shephard said.

Shephard would rather have ASU focus on making discoveries, not developing products - a function he believes should be left up to private companies.