Today’s university technology transfer model is built on the assumption that inventing faculty will remain employed by a single university for the long term, if not for life. In the face of harsh economic realities, if universities eventually buckle to public pressure and hire faculty ac- cording to renewable, short-term contracts, re- search administrators would need to revise – perhaps dramatically re-vamp – their university intellectual property strategies. Outside acade- mia, the switch to a mobile faculty workforce could introduce unintended negative conse- quences to our nation’s university technology transfer capabilities.
