Reform In Research

A Federal court recently killed a goose that had laid a huge golden egg for the University of Wisconsin. The Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco outlawed patents (for enriching food with vitamin D) which in 15 years had netted the University's research outfit $7,500,000. But Wisconsin still had this golden egg last week--in the form of investments--as well as ideas that may lead to a new era in university research.

Wisconsin's big money-maker is a skinny, self-effacing biochemist named Harry Steenbock. Some 18 years ago he discovered that food could be enriched with vitamin D (especially useful in preventing rickets in children) by being treated with ultraviolet rays.

Well aware that his discovery spelled money, Steenbock pondered what to do with it. Tradition gave him three choices: he could 1) keep his university job and develop his invention on the side, as most professor-inventors do; 2) quit the university and go into business to exploit his patents; or 3) make a free gift of his patent to food manufacturers.

Steenbock chose none of these. He decided, instead, to give his patents to Wisconsin to finance scientific research. Up shot was the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Administered by alumni leaders, the foundation is a holding company for patents obtained by Wisconsin research, each year turns its proceeds over to the University for further specified projects.

Professor or Percentage. Content with his $7,000 salary, Steenbock at first refused to accept royalties on his patents, but the University made him take 15%. Eventually, to the dismay of plain-living Harry Steenbock, this amounted to $50,000-$75,000 a year. The Research Foundation, meanwhile, grew rich beyond its dreams. Wisconsin professors began to produce a bonanza of new inventions; today the Research Foundation owns some 30 patents, including one for the synthetic production of hormones.

The most valuable researches were still Steenbock's. His ultraviolet-lamp irradiation process was sold to 250 companies for enriching milk, bread, animal feed, drugs, many another edible. (The conscientious Foundation refused to let chewing gum be irradiated, on the ground that it would do gum-chewers no good.)

When a small Los Angeles firm, Vitamin Technologists, Inc., began to irradiate in defiance of Wisconsin's patents, the Foundation sued. The Circuit Court pointed out that the patents were so sweeping that a farmer who let his alfalfa lie under the sun's ultraviolet rays would be an "infringer." The Court ruled that Dr. Steenbock's finding, though it put the world greatly in his debt, was a "discovery," not a patentable invention. The Foundation will appeal to the Supreme Court.

However that suit is decided, other Wisconsin patents and the accumulated endowment will continue to produce income. Twenty other universities (among them Oklahoma, Columbia and Purdue) have already adopted Wisconsin's idea.

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