Adaptable and Seamless Technology Transfer Program through Target Driven R&D (A-STEP) was established in 2009 to consolidate the previous funding programs for industry-academia collaboration and technology transfer in JST. In order to eliminate the discontinuity and inefficiency of research and development due to multiple programs being in parallel, the program was designed based on three philosophies of (1) one stop, (2) seamless, and (3) optimization. In this article, the program design philosophy of A-STEP and its implementation were described, and then the change of the program about the past nine years was reviewed.

Tohoku University and Furukawa Electric have been developing high strength Nb₃Sn wires which are adopted for high magnetic field superconducting magnets. Recently we developed a new high strength Nb₃Sn wire reinforced by Cu-Nb composite under the R&D support program A-STEP by JST. The 25 T cryogen-free superconducting magnet were fabricated using the rutherford cables which were composed of the new high strength Nb₃Sn wires.

Dainichiseika has been conducting an Academic-Industrial collaboration with Institute for Chemical Research of Kyoto University and had implemented an A-STEP (Adaptable and Seamless Technology Transfer Program through target driven R and D) program of JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) from Nov. 2011 to Mar. 2015 with them. In that program we had aimed to make the LRP (Living Radical Polymerization) technology which had been invented by Associate Professor Atushi GOTO of Kyoto University one of our core technologies and using this technology to develop high-performance color materials which has superiority and competitiveness in the world market. In this paper, we summarize the circumstance of the program, the content of this LRP technology and our results.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of exclusive patent ownership by universities ("solo patents") in promoting efficient collaboration between universities and industry. Using publicly available data, I tested the hypothesis that "to support the commercialization of university research results through collaboration between universities and industry, universities should own solo patents in the respective research fields."

The results revealed no simple pattern whereby universities that gained substantial revenue from industry tended to have obtained such solo patents. However, in most cases considered to illustrate successful collaboration between universities and industry (as reported in the MEXT casebook published in 2007), solo patent ownership by the respective universities was noted.

In addition, some examples are reported in which successful universities utilized solo patents as a means to initiate collaborative research with industrial partners in a strategic manner. It is possible that the obtaining of solo patents by universities will play a role in the commercialization of university research results.

In order to effectively perform education regarding intellectual property in higher education, it is important to gauge the knowledge and interest of the learners and create a curriculum that reflects this. In this research, we attempted to interpret the attitudes toward intellectual property studies of students majoring in science, with the objective of proposing a learning model that considers the learning needs of the learners. In order to understand the conditions of the learners, we performed qualitative research and analysis regarding the interest and awareness of learners toward intellectual property, based on free response comments by the learners. For the analysis, based on the data obtained, we performed data mining (text mining) on the comments regarding the learners' interests and attitudes toward intellectual property. We used co-occurrence network analysis for our analysis. As a result, regarding the learning content of intellectual property, we were able to suggest the necessity of performing organized studies of cultural content, such as copyrights, and industrial intellectual property, such as patents.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the Japanese Bayh-Dole system in the R&D projects for which the METI provides funds. The state of utilization of patents obtained under the system have been compared with that of government-owned patents, which are exempted from the application of the system. The results show the rate of utilized patents obtained under the system is higher than that of utilized government-owned patents. In conclusion, the system in the METI's R&D projects works as efficiently as initially expected.

We analyzed collaborative research contract information of 2004-2013 financial years, in order to clarify the situation of University-Industry research collaborations and the geographical distribution of the partners in Kitami Institute of Technology.

We obtained following results.

1) Cooperative researches with enterprises occupy about 62% and those with organizations that are not companies occupy about 38%.

2) In case of partners of large enterprises, regions with a large number of cooperative research are in the order of Kanto, Hokkaido, Tokai, Tohoku and Kinki. The cooperative researches with large enterprises that are located in Kanto area are increasing.

3) In case of partners of small and medium-sized enterprises, the partners that are located in Hokkaido, Kanto, Kinki and Tokai areas occupy about 98%. While the cooperative researches with small and medium-sized enterprises in Hokkaido are decreasing.

4) Partners of the cooperative researches with non-companies organization are located mostly in Hokkaido, particularly in Okhotsk area.

The tendency of decreasing of cooperative researches between Kitami Institute of Technology and companies in Hokkaido is thought a big problem for promoting of the local innovation. It is necessary to clarify and compare the situation of other areas, and to examine measures in future.