Founded 1964 | ||
 | ||
Yissum Research Development Company is the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yissum was founded in 1964 to market ideas and innovation of university researchers and employees.
Contents
In 2005, Yissum ranked second in commercial profit earnings among Israel's academic institutions, the first being the Weizmann Institute of Science's company, Yeda Research and Development.
Yissum has founded more than 80 start-up companies. Products brought to market by Yissum are sold in billions of dollars annually. Yissum has registered more than 8,000 individual patent applications in more than 2,200 patent families and signed over 700 license agreements.
Yissum has signed collaboration agreements with Cornell, UCBerkeley, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon University, Children's Medical Center, Columbia University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, Mayo Clinic, Michigan State University, NYU, Northwestern University, Rockefeller University, Stanford University and other educational institutions.
History
Yissum Research Development Company was founded in 1964 to protect and market the Hebrew University’s intellectual property. Products generate $2 billion in annual sales. Yissum has registered over 8,100 patents covering 2,300 inventions; licensed 700 technologies and formed 80 companies. Yissum’s business partners include Syngenta, Monsanto, Roche, Novartis, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Intel and Teva.
In Israel, technology transfer entities are organized as companies, unlike the United States. In the United States technology transfer operations only began after the Bayh–Dole Act in 1982. The formation of companies for doing technology transfer greatly influences the operation of technology transfer.
Yissum is a for-profit company which is fully owned by the Hebrew University which is a not-for-profit entity. This makes Yissum a non-typical entity which unlike regular for-profit companies has additional goals.
In 2005, Yissum developed a TTM solution considered the leading solution for universities in Israel. Yissum maintains ongoing contacts with Association of University Technology Managers which allows exchange of technologies, ideas, methods of work and many other valuable information.
In 2014, QLight Nanotech, a subsidiary of Yissum partly owned by Merck, opened an R&D facility in Jerusalem for developing LED lighting and flat-panel display products using semiconductor nanocrystal materials.