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DuPont hires Utek of Tampa

They enter into a two-way deal for inventions.

By SCOTT BARANCIK, Times Staff Writer
Published September 26, 2007

Utek Corp., a Tampa firm that helps businesses sift university labs for marketable inventions, usually works with smaller companies. Its typical publicly traded client has a market cap - stock price multiplied by total shares in circulation - of $250-million.

But on Tuesday, Utek said it had hooked up with a $45-billion giant: the 205-year-old DuPont company of Wilmington, Del.

"DuPont is a tremendous company," said Utek chief executive Cliff Gross, a former University of South Florida research professor.

He said DuPont's dual role reflects a realization that even the best companies - DuPont alone has more than 100 research labs - can't create all their necessary innovations in-house.

The five-year deal won't have an immediate impact on Utek's revenues, which totaled $56-million last year. Like Utek's roughly 50 other clients, DuPont will pay the 10-year-old firm a modest monthly fee to search for technologies that just might inspire its next big product.

The big bucks won't roll in until DuPont starts buying those technologies and paying related fees to Utek, or until Utek's other corporate clients begin buying some of the more than 12,000 DuPont patents that will be made available to them under a parallel Utek deal. The DuPont agreements mark the first time a Utek client will serve as a consumer and a producer of intellectual property.

Utek's stock price rose 30 cents, or 2 percent, Tuesday to close at $15.30 per share.

Times staff writer Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.

[Last modified September 25, 2007, 23:19:12]