Build the Right Relationships to Support Your Compliance Program
When you are in charge of compliance reporting in the tech transfer office, you can’t do the job independently. Although you have the responsibility for reporting with accuracy on a timely basis, your role inevitably puts you in the position of requesting and waiting for information from third parties. For that reason, how well you are able to perform your job depends on how much effort you put into building bridges to those who can help. It is critical that you establish good relationships in order to have what you need to properly complete Bayh-Dole reporting.
Within the tech transfer office, you will need to interact with your Licensing Associates, as well as the patent and finance groups, to know what patent and licensing decisions are being made throughout the life of federally funded inventions and associated agreements. Within your institution, you need to reach out to inventors, PI’s, and your sponsored programs office, to ensure that you have up-to-date information about any federal funds that support the development of inventions.
Outside your institution, the relationship with your law firms is important to make sure that they confirm federal funding information with you prior to filing any US patent applications. If the Government Support Statement is missing or inaccurate, the law firm will need to file amendments and certificates of correction with the USPTO.
I highly recommend you take the time to establish strong relationships with your TTO staff, institution researchers, sponsored research office and outside patent counsel. At the end of the day you will find that compliance reporting becomes more streamlined and less complicated.