A grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce will allow the New York State Science and Technology Law Center at Syracuse University to give advice to budding local entrepreneurs.

Launch NY, a nonprofit aimed at helping companies and improving the entrepreneurship culture in upstate New York, has set up a partnership with the SU center to allow for clients to receive advice and support, targeted to life sciences and high-tech companies. The $500,000 grant, which also helped Launch NY, set up an affiliation with the Innovation Center of the Rockies.

Launch NY identifies, supports and invests in high-growth, high-impact companies “to drive and transform the economy through entrepreneurship,” said President and CEO Marnie LaVigne.

An important aspect of the program is to help companies with high growth potential make it to the market. The services offered by SU are critical to making that happen, LaVigne said.

Launch NY has assisted more than 400 companies — which add up to about 1,000 jobs — since 2012, said Jack Rudnick, director of NYS STLC and of SU’s Technology Commercialization Law Program.

Rudnick said economic growth is going to come from these startups because they are the companies that are hiring. The technology and law center helps startup companies by informing them about intellectual property, its regulations, competitive analysis and what the market looks like.

“You take those services and match them with what Launch NY is trying to do, helping startups in their region … it’s a perfect relationship,” Rudnick said.

Launch NY sends select clients who are in the product or technology fields to NYS STLC. Rudnick said he, along with his colleagues, graduate students and law students, help these clients in the initial stage.

New York state provided a grant to the academic program that involves two to three credit programs that Rudnick teaches because of the work the NYS STLC does, said Molly Zimmerman, associate director of the NYS STLC.

“They saw the efficacy of what we were doing and so they gave us a grant of a million dollars over three years,” Zimmerman added.

This is the fourth time NYS STLC has received the grant. The grant allows it to pay students in the academic programs to conduct even more research. The partnership with Launch NY is also a great opportunity for students to learn as it provides them with projects to work on, Zimmerman said.

Heather Roark Parker, a third-year law student, is in charge of creating an intellectual property landscape surrounding a particular technology that Launch NY approaches the law center with. Parker said often times an entrepreneur has a promising idea, but a determination of its worth can’t be made until later in the process.

“The purpose of an intellectual property landscape is to evaluate patents that may be similar to the presented technology and identify whether the entrepreneur has a competitive advantage,” Parker said. “If it is found a patent of another directly conflicts with the presented technology, the entrepreneur will likely have a more complicated path to commercialization.”

Parker added that the intellectual property landscape, which is commonly referred to as due diligence, provides a broad view of competing technologies.

Jessica Chesher, who looks after the marketing and communications tasks along with managing some of the grant money, said the center is naturally set up to be a partner with Launch NY.

“The organizations have many mutual interests in terms of helping people even though they have slightly different capabilities,” Chesher said. “NYS STLC hones in on the specific legal aspects whereas Launch NY is more broad in their works.”

Published on September 20, 2015 at 9:54 pm

Contact Arva: ahassonj@syr.edu