Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the premier provider of legal services to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises worldwide, announced today that Katharine "Kathy" Ku has joined the firm as chief licensing advisor in the Palo Alto office.
Ku is an internationally recognized leader in the field of technology transfer. Ku served nearly four decades at Stanford University's Office of Technology Licensing (OTL), where she led the University's technology licensing program as executive director for 27 years. She helped establish nine principles related to university technology licensing. The principles are set forth in a document entitled "In the Public Interest: Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology." More than 120 institutions have adopted the principles since they were published in 2007.
Ku came to Stanford in 1979, first as a patent engineer in the Office of Sponsored Research. She joined Stanford's OTL in 1981, and became its executive director in 1991, focusing on OTL's management, planning, and policy issues, where she served until June 2018. For four years in the mid-1990s, she also directed Stanford's Office of Sponsored Research. In 2001, she was awarded the Bayh-Dole Award for her work in advancing technology transfer from the Association of University Technology Managers. During her tenure, OTL licensed hundreds of new technologies and brought in $1.8 billion, much of which went back to fund new research. The companies that were formed from these technologies have resulted in the employment of thousands of individuals.