Todd Finkelmeyer — 1/21/2009 1:50 pm
University of Wisconsin-Madison orthopedic surgeon and researcher Dr. Thomas Zdeblick has received millions of dollars in royalty payments from a medical device company for a variety of spinal implants he helped invent, according to an investigation recently made public by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
But a review by The Capital Times finds that the university has no legal right to share in Zdeblick's windfall. University policy only requires its researchers to patent inventions through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation if their discoveries are funded with federal money.
"The policy at the university is you start with the presumption that faculty and staff own their own intellectual property," said Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of WARF. "Then it becomes an issue of funding source. And if it's not federally funded research, they don't have to go through WARF. We try to be user-friendly and add value, but not everyone goes through us."
