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Last year, UCLA received more than $10 million in supplemental income from the sale of patented technology.

According to the Office of Intellectual Property Administration, this year is looking even better.

UCLA is expected to earn over $1 million for its most recent patent agreement, said George Abe, the office’s business development manager for physical science.

The agreement was negotiated for several weeks and covers nine patents that deal with transmitting images over wireless devices.

“This is the largest patent agreement in the history of UCLA’s School of Engineering,” Abe said.

After several years of research on a multimedia communications project, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences cemented a license agreement between the Image Communications Laboratory and Samsung, Abe said.

With the drastic increase of wireless communication devices like cell phones and palm computers, images and video clips need to be sent as clearly and efficiently as possible, said John Villasenor, the research group’s adviser and an electrical engineering professor.

“Companies that are able to offer high-quality multimedia services to their customers will distinguish themselves from the competition,” Villasenor said.

Villasenor and his research group worked directly with Samsung, who funded the project and even sent researchers to UCLA.

Samsung and UCLA had joint ownership of the research collected while the research was being conducted, Abe said. 

“Now, Samsung is granted exclusivity over the patents,” he said. “They have the rights to market, use and modify the technology.”

Emily Loughran, director of licensing at the OIPA, handled the negotiation process, which took a few weeks to complete. 

Loughran told The Associated Press she had been aware of the potential for the patents for a while.

“While we were confident in our ability to license the patents, our first preference was to license (the patents) to Samsung, since they were our collaborators in the research that led to the innovations,” she said.

Of the royalties collected from Samsung, 35 percent will go to the individual researchers involved in the project, and 65 percent will go to the University of California Board of Regents.

“This kind of rigorous, academically ground-breaking research is of great value and interest to the world’s leading technology companies,” said Vijay Dhir, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“It is a valuable learning tool for the students,” Dhir added.

Villasenor also talked about the importance of research projects, saying that successful research is a win-win for everyone involved.

It provides students with support in guiding them throughout the research project, and provides them with increased knowledge of their related field, he said.

It also brings in revenue for schools, researchers, companies involved and the related industry.

“Overall, these projects serve to make society a better place,” Villasenor said, emphasizing the benefits advancements in technology offer the public.