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LAU, Lebanese American University

Protect what you're building.

For students, alumni and outside founders in any LAU course, programme or accelerator: the office that protects startup ideas, technologies and methods.

Talk to the TTOLAU Engine

Three things the TTO does for founders.

  • Protect your startup's technology

    A method, a product, a piece of software, a brand. If it is worth protecting, the TTO helps you file, whether or not it was built with LAU resources.

  • Build on LAU research

    Take a protected LAU technology and form the company around it, with a licence on clear founder terms. The TTO and LAU Engine match founders to inventions whose inventors stay in the lab.

  • Keep what is yours

    Startups in LAU Engine programmes whose technology was built without LAU resources own their IP in full. The TTO's job is to help you keep it that way.

The pipeline.

From a first course to New York and back. The TTO is available at every stage.

  1. 01

    Schools

    One entrepreneurship course and school pre-incubators

  2. 02

    Engine

    Open all year, every school, every student

  3. 03

    Hackathons

    A day to a week; LAU Hacks

  4. 04

    Incubators

    Intilaq and We Build, twelve weeks

  5. 05

    LAUNCH

    Sixteen-week accelerator; Invest Day

  6. 06

    ORBIT

    Four weeks online for alumni founders abroad

  7. 07

    SCALE

    Two weeks in New York, then nine months

  8. 08

    Full circle

    Founders return as mentors, judges and investors

TTO, at any stage

Students, faculty, alumni and founders enrolled in any LAU course, project, school programme or LAU Engine programme can bring something worth protecting to the TTO at any point along the way.

Licence or spinout?

  • Licence to a company

    An existing company brings the research to market. Low time cost for the inventor, who shares in revenue.

  • Spinout

    A new company is formed around the research. The TTO licenses the IP to it; LAU Engine builds it. Higher risk, higher upside.

Founder terms

Principles of the standard spinout licence, draft for approval by the IP Committee and General Counsel.

  1. 01Exclusive licence to the founding company for the disclosed IP, in a defined field.
  2. 02Low or deferred upfront fee so cash goes into the product.
  3. 03A small, pre-set equity stake for LAU, with no board seat and no veto.
  4. 04Faculty founders keep their post under the conflict-of-interest policy; students and alumni founders do not need to be inventors.

Want to build it? Say so.

Talk to the TTO