Wesley "Wes" Blakeslee knows the art of the deal, and
he wants to seal many more on behalf of
Johns Hopkins faculty and staff with an interest in
bringing their inventions and discoveries to the
marketplace.
Last May, Blakeslee was appointed executive director
of Johns Hopkins
Technology Transfer, an
office for which he had served as acting director for eight
months.
When Blakeslee took over in September 2006, he focused
much of his effort on building the
depth of the licensing staff and freeing up that staff from
many administrative duties to focus on
"making deals." He also implemented the creation of a new
information system to manage complex
business matters so that the office could improve faculty
service and support, its primary mission.
Blakeslee said the efforts are already paying
dividends, with fiscal year 2007 being a record
year for invention disclosures, agreements and licensing
income.This past year the office did $9.6
million in licensing income and received an additional
$600,000 in income from equity sales. One target
for 2008: growing disclosures to more than 300, a number
never before achieved at JHU.
But those figures do not tell the entire story of the
economic benefit of technology transfer to
the university, he said. For example, one of the largest
dollar-producing inventions — producing well in
excess of $1 million — is not processed through JHTT
because it originated when technology transfer
was handled by the schools individually.
He said that one of the "best-kept secrets" is that
Johns Hopkins is responsible for a
significant amount of start-up companies, which have a
sizable economic impact. Since 2000, more
than 30 companies have been formed based on Johns Hopkins
technologies.
"We have a very energetic and entrepreneurial faculty
here, a fact for which JHU has never
been given credit," Blakeslee said, pointing out that the
primary goal of technology transfer is to bring
new discoveries to the marketplace. "We have many inventors
who are also clinicians, and their primary
motivation is to see a treatment get to their patients."
Technology transfer has existed at Johns Hopkins in
some form for decades. In 2002, the
efforts were consolidated into a single office. Johns
Hopkins Technology Transfer serves as the
intellectual property administration center for the
university's academic divisions, assisting Johns
Hopkins researchers and inventors as a licensing, patent
and technology commercialization office. It
also acts as a liaison to parties interested in leveraging
JHU research or materials for academic or
corporate endeavors. The Applied Physics Laboratory
operates its own Office of Technology Transfer.
Blakeslee said that his office's name is something of
a misnomer, and part of his charge, he
feels, has been to market more effectively what the office
does.
"We do more than technology transfer. We do
development, licensing and commercializing," he
said. "I like to say we help advance the university mission
of bringing the benefits of discovery to the
world by converting our inventions to products that help
people."
Blakeslee said that in his world, it all boils down to
people, products and money. Johns Hopkins
inventors create a product, and his office helps find the
people who would be interested in it and the
money needed to make it a reality.
The primary functions of JHTT include encouraging the
disclosure of new ideas and discoveries,
and helping JHU researchers identify patentable and
copyrightable inventions and tangible research
properties that might ultimately become commercial products
and services. The office also protects
and manages the university's intellectual and tangible
property, and helps license technologies. In turn,
the net profit from a venture gets distributed back to the
faculty, the school and the university.
Blakeslee, a lawyer with much experience in
commercialization of technology and licensing of
intellectual property, was recently named by Maryland Super
Lawyers Magazine as one of the top
attorneys in the state, a peer-given designation that he
calls "a great honor."
He joined Johns Hopkins in 1999 to serve as associate
general counsel, responsible for the
complex legal issues involved in intellectual property
matters, technology licensing and transfer,
sponsored research agreements, and export and import
controls.
Previously, he had been since 1984 the chief executive
officer of Blakeslee, Wallace and
Associates, focusing his legal practice on technology
development, acquisitions and licensing. He
managed successful new companies and assisted more than 50
startups.
Prior to beginning his law career, Blakeslee was an
engineering manager at NASA.
Blakeslee said that one challenge of his job is the
size of the institution compared to the size
of his office. He said that peers such as Harvard, MIT and
Stanford have many more licensing staff
per dollar of research.
Blakeslee said that his staff is highly educated, and
needs to be to meet the challenges of
dealing with cutting-edge technology. "That is our biggest
challenge," he said. "The nature of our
research is cutting-edge, but that also means the product
is often in its very early stages, often
before proof-of-concept. To get the product to the stage of
someone being interested, to find the
dollars needed, is difficult. Most of our staff have PhDs
and many have multiple degrees. It takes that
level of understanding to evaluate an invention and to know
where to place the product."
In terms of moving forward, Blakeslee said that he
wants the office to become even more
sales-oriented and to continue to improve faculty service.
"We want to be more proactive here," he
said, "to have a better understanding of the players and
the pipelines, and better position ourselves to
get our inventions out there in the private sector. We have
to develop a sales mentality. That is the
next stage of our development. We need to get the
resources, management and staff in place so that
we can do our job and do it at the level we want and this
university deserves."