About the HBCU IP Futures Collaborative

The Futures Collaborative is a faculty community of practice that joined in the Michelson commitment to empower all future entrepreneurs and innovators with education on intellectual property rights and strategy.

Intellectual property (IP) refers to intangible creations of the mind that gain protection through patents, copyright, tradmarks and trade secrets. In today’s knowledge economy, it’s critical for students to understand how to capture the value of their ideas by leveraging IP rights.

Since 2016, the Michelson 20MM Foundation, founded by famed inventor Dr. Gary K. Michelson, has focused its expertise, resources, and network on developing a national IP education initiative, the Michelson Institute for Intellectual Property (Michelson IP). Michelson IP’s mission is to empower the next generation of inventors, entrepreneurs and creators with the knowledge needed to protect, share, and commercialize their innovations.

We introduced The HBCU IP Futures Collaborative in 2021, a project that supported the awareness, understanding, and development of IP by seeding IP education resources across several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). A core group of esteemed HBCU faculty members joined together to collaborate on best practices for integrating IP content into curricular and co-curricular programs and offerings on campus. In support of this program, the Michelson 20MM Foundation provided a grants to each participating institution to support educators as they integrate the materials into their courses.

The goals of The HBCU IP Futures Collaborative are to:

• Offer robust educational content focused on intellectual property (IP) rights and grow the adoption and integration of Michelson IP’s digital resources across curricula and programming at participating institutions.
• Create a community of practice with participating faculty members, to share best practices and insights for IP subject matter instruction across disciplines.
• Promote and share the importance of IP protection and awareness among the business, entrepreneurship, STEM, engineering, maker, and creative communities of participating HBCU institutions.

HBCU IP Futures also aims to uplift contributions from emerging Black researchers, entrepreneurs, and creators. HBCUs have long been hubs of innovation across diverse fields, from medical research, to agriculture, to the arts. They have been particularly successful in graduating students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields; according to the United Negro College Fund, 25% of African-American graduates with STEM degrees come from HBCUs. The American Sociological Association reported that 50% of all African-American engineers are graduates of HBCUs.

Despite a rise in intellectual property developed by HBCUs since 2010, as a collective, they have yet to fully harness their IP generating potential. This is consistent with persistent opportunity gaps in the arena of innovation and invention as a whole, and has been reflected in the small percentage of patents issued to women and people of color. According to the Innovation Alliance, people of color and low-income individuals apply for and hold far fewer patents than white males, which is contributing to an imbalance in entrepreneurial and startup success rates.

HBCU IP Futures looks forward to exploring how increasing IP awareness can help both students and institutions to capitalize on their intellectual assets and innovations.

Institutional Partners