January 2000

Gifts that Keep Giving: Patents

By Antonio Regalado

This Christmas, universities added patents to their wish list. In the latest trend in corporate philanthropy, large companies are giving away millions in unused intellectual property, and walking away with a tax write-off-and plenty of good will.

In October, Procter & Gamble gave 40 U.S. and international patents to the Milwaukee School of Engineering; all the gift-wrapped items are related to a technique to speed up product design. The gift is part of "a comprehensive re-thinking of the way we use our patent rights," says Jacobus Rasswer, P&G vice president and general counsel for patents. Other corporate giants, including DuPont, Dow Chemical and Hoechst, have been in a similarly generous mood (see table on page 2).

This largesse might only be the beginning. Procter & Gamble, for one, holds some 25,000 patents worldwide-but only 10 percent cover technology the company actually uses. In the past the multinational corporation just "stored the rest away," says Rasswer. "That mindset has totally changed," he says, since P&G set about trying to get more value out of its intellectual property holdings two years ago. In addition to donating patents, P&G has begun licensing patents to other companies and posting inventions for sale on an online patent exchange called Yet2.com that it helped launch.