About the Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Office

Wayne Plourde

Director, Intellectual Property and Management Office

Services Offered

  • Identification of inventions and other creations having commercial potential 
  • Marketability
  • Obtaining and maintaining intellectual property
  • Technology transfer strategy development
  • Marketing of Intellectual Property (IP)
  • Licensing IP to new or existing companies
  • License administration
  • Facilitating formation of start-up companies
  • Assistance on IP matters in general
  • Outreach and training for faculty, staff and students

Vision

The Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Office is charged with managing RIT’s intellectual property portfolio in a manner so as to:

  • enhance the reputation of the Institute, its faculty, staff and students;
  • support Institute efforts to ensure graduating students have been imbued with an entrepreneurial spirit and an applied understanding of IP;
  • foster enhanced research interactions with the private sector;
  • facilitate the transfer of RIT technologies for the use and benefit of society through technology licensing arrangements;
  • generate additional research funds through leveraging the value of RIT’s intellectual property.

In five years RIT expects to have a campus-wide culture of managing and leveraging intellectual property for the benefit of the Institute, its faculty, staff and students. This will be evidenced by:

  • a growing intellectual property portfolio;
  • a process that encourages publishing while protecting intellectual property;
  • enhanced research partnerships with industry, and;
  • increasing transfers of intellectual property to the private sector via licenses to existing or new (start-up) companies.
A flowerbed outside of the University Student Center.

Mailing Address

Intellectual Property & Technology Transfer Office
University Services Center (Building 87), Room 2469
145 Lomb Memorial Drive 
Rochester Institute of Technology 
Rochester, NY 14623