How Stanford will benefit from a Google IPO
In all the news coverage regarding a possible Google initial public offering, I saw a few article mention that, in addition to the venture capitalists who provided the funds to start Google, Stanford University stood to make a good deal of money from any such offering. None of the articles I read said why, though.
Well, here's why (from "Software Licensing: Stanford's Approach" by Katharine Ku, Director of Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing):
Sergey Brin and Larry Page had worked on a search engine for many years. Because the students had been paid by a government contract in the course of their research to satisfy their Ph.D. degree requirements, under both Stanford's Patent and Copyright policies Stanford had ownership to the software, that is, the written code. In addition, Stanford filed a patent on the method of ranking Web pages in order to improve searches. After trying to find the best licensee, Stanford determined that these inventors were in the best position to develop the invention effectively, and so Stanford licensed the technology to their company, Google.
Well, here's why (from "Software Licensing: Stanford's Approach" by Katharine Ku, Director of Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing):
Sergey Brin and Larry Page had worked on a search engine for many years. Because the students had been paid by a government contract in the course of their research to satisfy their Ph.D. degree requirements, under both Stanford's Patent and Copyright policies Stanford had ownership to the software, that is, the written code. In addition, Stanford filed a patent on the method of ranking Web pages in order to improve searches. After trying to find the best licensee, Stanford determined that these inventors were in the best position to develop the invention effectively, and so Stanford licensed the technology to their company, Google.
// 10/26/2003 
