Patent Pending: UNH

It is not often that a school that's been in existence for 110 years, can celebrate a first-of-a-kind donation, especially one that has the potential to be so lucrative.

In April, the University of NH in Durham received a sizable donation from California-based defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which gave $62,000 to the school, equipment to enhance the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences (CEPS) and two patents previously owned by Northrup. These patents - a mercury switch and a steerable antenna - are independently valued at more than $1 million each.

"This is the first patent anyone has donated to UNH," says Robert Dalton, director of the UNH Office of Intellectual Property Management. "It helps build a partnership between us that will, I believe, lead to other exciting activities and projects."

According to John Aber, vice president for research and public service at UNH, the patents were obtained after one of Northrup's employees, who was in NH at the time, came across the engineering program at the school last fall.

"That person saw potential in the university and got the two sides together. The timing was right," Aber says.

But why give away million-dollar patents? Aber says companies like Northrop have thousands of patents, but it costs money to maintain them. "For those patents that they don't have the time or the manpower to develop, it makes more sense for them to donate them for the tax write-off," he says.

However, for UNH to benefit from the donation, it must be able to develop the patent. "There is a cost to maintaining a patent," Aber says. Dalton and Aber met with people within CEPS to see if there was any interest in doing so. When students and professors within the school expressed excitement, the process continued.

Northrup's $62,000 grant and contribution of equipment makes the patent donation more palatable to the school because it gives UNH the resources and tools to fully develop the patent's potential, Aber says.

This donation bodes well for future patents at UNH. "The school has committed to developing relationships with companies like Northrup and BAE Systems," Aber says. "We've just started our intellectual property management office, so this certainly lays the groundwork for potential partnerships in the future."