With a quarter of a century of experience in technology transfer and in the exploitation of university patents, the Technology Licensing Board of the Baden-Württemberg universities is one of the longest active and most successful German patent exploitation agencies.

The TLB GmbH celebrated this anniversary with a festive event in Karlsruhe. At the event, the Rector of the University of Stuttgart and Chairman of the Shareholders' Meeting, Prof. Wolfram Ressel, as well as the former long-standing Supervisory Board of TLB GmbH, Prof. Winfried Lieber, spoke with TLB Managing Director Dr.-Ing. Hubert Siller about the history, the present, the successes and the future of TLB GmbH.

Prof. Giso Hahn (University of Konstanz) explained in a short interview how successful technology transfer can be. The Constance professor used the example of several successful transfer projects to show how the licensing of patented university inventions can proceed successfully.
Looking ahead to the next 25 years, TLB Managing Director Hubert Siller and Prof. Ressel outlined in conversation with moderator Dr. Jan-Martin Wiarda how technology transfer via patents could succeed even better and what measures could contribute to this from the political side.
The speakers agreed that a central organisation would be extremely helpful in making technology transfer in Baden-Württemberg successful. However, such an organisation could not work successfully and sustainably without the support of the state government. The TLB could take on this role, as Prof. Ressel explained. After all, the TLB GmbH was founded in 1998 as such a long-term institution.

The two keynotes by Prof. Nejila Parspour (University of Stuttgart) and Dr.-Ing. Hans Hubschneider of fokus.energie e.V. provided exciting insights into the topic of technology transfer from the perspective of research and business.

Prof. Nejila Parspour teaches electrical energy conversion at the University of Stuttgart and explained in her keynote speech how research is conducted at the institute and which inventions are registered for patent. Cooperations and collaboration with companies were another focus of her keynote. In addition, Prof. Parspour spoke about the tension between publications and patent applications in university research.   

The Karlsruhe entrepreneur Hans Hubschneider is now active in the fokus.energie e.V network and reported in his keynote about his experiences with various ways of technology transfer. For Hubschneider, the most important thing is close contact between companies and research institutions.  He explained that licensing of patent-protected research results can be successful if the technology transfer is professionally managed, for example by an agency such as TLB.  Other ways of successful technology transfer are to found a spin-off from the research institutions or to organise technology transfer through university cooperation.

Finally, IHK Managing Director Dr. Arne Rudolph presented Hubert Siller with the IHK certificate for 25 years of successful entrepreneurial activity.

After the speeches, the event continued with a lively get-together.

Die Jubiläumsbroschüre hier als Blättermagazin: https://publish.flyeralarm.digital/jubilaeumsbroschuere-25-jahre-tlb-gmbh/