News
The first contract logged on our system was for work that was undertaken for a pharmaceutical company on bioequivalence of one of their generic products. The work was conducted by the Division of Pharmacology and Professor Helen McIlleron was the Principal Investigator. This 2001 contract was signed by our current RC&I Director as in his then role as Research Contracts Manager, of the Office of Industry Liaison (OIL) Department of Research Development.
The 30,000th contract was logged in May 2018 for Contracts Manager, Naseema Sonday and with amazing coincidence the Principal Investigator is once again Prof Helen McIlleron! In this case the contract relates to an addition to a Consortium Agreement that is being entered into with Medicins Sans Frontieres. To date (end May) a total of 1111 new contracts have been logged for the Contracts Managers to review wince the commencement of 2018.
UCT Inventors will be receiving personal patent portfolio reports in the near future, but please email us if you would like your one now.
The patent reports are typically useful for updating your CV, or for NRF ratings. The report lists all the patent families that you are listed as an inventor on, as well as the application dates, status and territories involved.
The World Intellectual Property (IP) Day is celebrated each year on 26 April and this year the theme is “Powering change: Women in innovation and creativity”. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has selected this theme to recognise and celebrate the contribution of women in driving global change through science, innovation and the arts.
UCT was recently granted a US patent for its maxillofacial distractor, a medical device for the reconstruction of the human upper jaw (maxilla). This device has been jointly invented by A/Prof George Vicatos of Mechanical Engineering, Dr Rushdi Hendricks who is a maxillofacial surgeon in private practice, and James Boonzaier while studying at UCT. Dr Hendricks recently completed a PhD related to this work.