University Technology Transfer

How the Universidad de los Andes Technology Transfer Office brought patent validation to its entire portfolio

75+

Inventions validated YTD

190+

YTD reports ran

About

The Universidad de los Andes Technology Transfer Office manages the protection and commercialization of inventions across the university's research, spanning medicine, dentistry, engineering, nutrition, and the social sciences. It operates under the university's research vice-rectory in Santiago, Chile, and was recognized in 2024 as Chile's best technology transfer office by the Red de Gestores Tecnológicos. Its portfolio includes granted patents, active licenses, and spin-offs.

Industry

University Technology Transfer

Company size

University TTO

Founded

2010

Share

"Patentia has accelerated our technology search and analysis, giving us faster, more structured access to strategic patent information and sharpening our technology watch and competitive intelligence work."

Karen Marquez

Technology Manager, Universidad de los Andes

The Company

One office, a portfolio across every discipline

The Universidad de los Andes Technology Transfer Office does not work in a single field. In a typical year its team evaluates invention disclosures from the medical school and the university hospital, from dentistry, from engineering, and from the social sciences.

That breadth is a strength and a problem at once. Each disclosure represents a researcher who believes they have something novel. Each one carries the same question the office must answer before it commits any budget: is this invention actually new against the global state of the art, and if so, what is defensible.

Answering that question well, across dozens of inventions a year and across fields no single person can be expert in, is the core work of the office. It is also the work most constrained by cost and time.

The Challenge

Triaging a portfolio under real budget limits

Chilean technology transfer offices operate on public funding that is competitive and not guaranteed year to year. Every patent filing carries a cost, and a national filing is only the beginning if the invention is worth protecting internationally. The office cannot afford to file everything, and it cannot afford to file the wrong things.

The traditional way to make those decisions is slow and expensive. A prior art search and a patentability opinion from outside counsel can cost thousands of dollars and take weeks for a single invention. For an office evaluating dozens of disclosures a year, commissioning that work for every one is not viable. Decisions risk being made on partial information, with some inventions advancing before the office has a clear picture of the prior art around them.

The office needed a way to run that analysis across the whole portfolio, quickly and at a cost that matched the volume, so it could concentrate its filing budget where the evidence was strongest.

"Before, a thorough prior art search and patentability read was something we could justify for a few priority cases. Now we can run it across the portfolio, which changes how we decide what to protect."

Karen Marquez

Technology Manager, Universidad de los Andes

The Solution

Validation at the scale of the portfolio

Over the past year, the office used Patentia to validate more than 60 inventions, running over 140 reports across prior art search, patentability analysis, and market research. The volume reflects the real shape of the office's work: not a handful of priority cases, but the full intake across every discipline.

For each invention, a semantic prior art search across more than 165 million patents surfaced the closest references, and a patentability analysis evaluated the claims against them with examiner-grade reasoning, returning a clear direction on whether to file, refine the claims, or reconsider. Market research reports added the commercial side of the decision, sizing the opportunity behind an invention before the office invested in protecting it.

Bringing those three analyses into a single workflow, at a cost that matched the office's volume, let the team apply the same rigor to every disclosure rather than rationing it to a few.

The Results

Better decisions, made earlier

The value to the office is not that it filed more. It is that it filed with evidence, and knew why.

Running validation across the portfolio changed the office's decision-making from selective to systematic. Inventions now carry a documented view of the prior art and a clear recommendation before they reach the filing stage. The office concentrates its resources on the cases with the strongest position, supported by analysis rather than by conviction alone, and researchers get faster, clearer feedback on where their work stands.

For an office that evaluates inventions across medicine, dentistry, engineering, under the budget constraints every Chilean TTO works within, that shift is structural. It lets a small team make defensible decisions across a large and varied portfolio, quickly enough to keep pace with the disclosures coming in and at a cost that allows the same rigor to be applied to all of them.

"What changed is that good prior art analysis is no longer a luxury we ration. It is something we can apply to every invention, and that makes our decisions about what to protect far stronger."

Karen Marquez

Technology Manager, Universidad de los Andes

View all case studies

How SalmoClinic secured a granted patent for its fish-health technology and built a foundation to protect what comes next

1

Granted patent secured from a single Patentia engagement

How SalmoClinic secured a granted patent for its fish-health technology and built a foundation to protect what comes next

1

Granted patent secured from a single Patentia engagement

How SalmoClinic secured a granted patent for its fish-health technology and built a foundation to protect what comes next

1

Granted patent secured from a single Patentia engagement

How AMTC validated dozens of mining inventions for a fraction of the traditional cost

35+

Inventions validated YTD

How AMTC validated dozens of mining inventions for a fraction of the traditional cost

35+

Inventions validated YTD

How AMTC validated dozens of mining inventions for a fraction of the traditional cost

35+

Inventions validated YTD