TOUGH TO SWALLOW

In 1992, after some faculty dissatisfaction, the foundation handed the task over to the university itself, which, Holloway says, felt it could do the job even better. Now each campus has its own technology-transfer office, in addition to the central office in Boulder.

The university system receives about eighty invention disclosures each year. Less than 10 percent of those go to market, and less than 10 percent of those that hit the market actually make money. Still, according to Taylor, the University of Colorado system earned a little more than $1 million off its various licensing fees last year.

Much of that money comes from former CU all-stars who went on to start their own companies with the research results they originally collected on campus. Larry Gold, a former molecular biology professor, recently created NeXagen, a biotechnology company. Thomas Cech, CU's Nobel laureate in chemistry, has founded several companies.

Chemistry professor Marvin Caruthers still earns money for himself and CU off his "gene machine," which manufactures DNA. And, Materna notwithstanding, Allen's numerous other discoveries have generated piles of cash. ("Caruthers and Bob Allen are the two big money-makers for the university," Holloway says.)

A change in federal laws in 1982 also permitted professors to earn money for themselves off of federally funded research. Mike Gabridge says Colorado's researchers can earn a quarter of the royalties off their inventions. Another quarter goes to the professor's department. The rest is divided up between the university and a separate CU research fund.

Despite the money it brings in, however, Colorado still remains far behind money-churning institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, as well as similarly sized peer institutions such as the University of Iowa. According to a recent study by the Association of University Technology Managers, CU ranked 29th out of 60 universities surveyed in the amount of money earned from its faculty's inventions.

"People didn't quite understand the value to the university of these inventions," explains Taylor. A big win for CU in the case against American Cyanamid could go a long way in helping to make that clear. And a loss could make for an extremely costly lesson.