Tomarial advises the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) in the legal architecture to incorporate companies spin off: they are those that are born in the bosom of the university and later begin a trajectory outside it. One of these companies has recently made international news: iPronics is a spin-off selected by the prestigious scientific journal Nature among the most promising companies in the world. It was born within the UPV and has now started its independent development.
As our partner explains Tomás Vázquez Lépinette, director of the Legal Area, “for more than five years, Tomarial has been advising the UPV's Promotion, Innovation and Transfer service in matters of spin-off; that is, of companies that arise from the university environment in order to enhance the research carried out by university professors. As is known, universities have a dual function, teaching and research. In this sense, a good part of university research is translated into technological knowledge that can be exploited in the form of patents or know-how, and which serve as a basis for technological companies created by universities and their researchers ”.
The director of Tomarial's legal area, Tomás Vázquez Lépinette, highlights that “the regulation of spin-off coming from public universities it is extremely complex, it is necessary to master very diverse legal aspects such as the regulations of university officials (since researchers are public employees); regulations of mercantile companies (for partner agreements), as well as industrial and intellectual property regulations (since technology transfer agreements are generally signed). In cases like this "it is nothing less than to legally articulate a business project that allows universities to give value to the research carried out."
As the newspaper El País has highlighted in a news, the company iPronics has created a programmable photonic processor that reduces costs, time and costs: “Integrated photonics is a technology that promises to revolutionize 5G communication, data centers, artificial intelligence systems, autonomous driving or quantum computing. " iPronics, which was born in 2019 within the UPV, aims to make the use of photonic technology cheaper and more democratic: “To do this, it has manufactured a programmable photonic processor that can be configured for different applications. In this way, development times are reduced to just three weeks and the associated costs are reduced due to the possibility of increasing the manufacturing volume ”.
Tomarial has extensive experience in advising start ups, who have specific needs, as commented Tomás Vázquez Lépinette: “their needs are greater than those of ordinary commercial companies due to the complexity of the regulatory regulations and their specificity. Any bad initial step can frustrate a project that is already business-wise complicated.”
