Capitalism via campus connection

Bothell-based Microvision makes products that scan a beam of light into a person's retina to project full-motion images. Say, for instance, a helicopter pilot needed to call up a map of enemy territory while in flight. The technology would enable the pilot to do so on a pair of goggles.

Yesterday, Microvision said it has formed a subsidiary, Lumera, which is developing technology that drives information more quickly through fiber-optic networks. In essence, the technology would allow someone to download a two-hour movie in roughly 1 to 2 seconds.

While these ideas seem unrelated, they contain a similar key ingredient: In both instances, Microvision licensed technology developed by the University of Washington.

Universities are in the business of conducting long-range research, but many times that research contains commercial applications. For high-tech companies and even venture capitalists, the UW campus has proved to be a fertile hunting ground for ideas.

Ed Lazowska, who heads the UW Computer Science and Engineering Department, said most major universities own one or two inventions that bring in a majority of its licensing revenue. The University of Wisconsin has the distinction of developing rat poison and Vitamin D. At the UW, a medical-school professor holds a set of patents for developing the hepatitis-B vaccine.

In the past four years, the emphasis has shifted toward technology. The Computer Science and Engineering Department has spawned 10 start-ups in that time and created technology that has been used by dozens of companies.

Alon Levy, a department faculty member, founded Nimble Technology, which created XML-based software that allows computers to talk to one another regardless of location or format.

UW professors Tom Anderson, David Wetherall and Dan Weld, and doctoral student Stefan Savage founded Asta Networks, a company that develops technology to prevent denial-of-service attacks, which paralyze Web sites by flooding computer networks with unwanted Internet traffic.

If you've ever searched the Internet on either Webcrawler or Metacrawler, both were developed at the UW. (Webcrawler was sold to America Online and then to Excite. Metacrawler was sold to Go2Net and is now owned by InfoSpace.)

"If you look at any study of technology-based economic development, the presence of strong research universities is a reason for their success," said Lazowska, who is internationally recognized for his work on the design and analysis of advanced computer systems.

That has spurred the interest of Arch Venture Partners and Madrona Venture Group, both of which are known for investing in high-tech start-ups affiliated with UW.

Greg Gottesman, managing director at Madrona, said of all the UW-related start-ups his company has invested in, none has failed. The reason, he said, is that in many instances the companies are founded by UW professors, who have built core technology with some intrinsic value. At the minimum, they contain good intellectual property.

"They're the ones who are giving the conferences," he said of the professors. "When they say, `We have developed a new technology,' you stop whatever you're doing and you pay attention."

Inside Technology appears Tuesdays in the Business section of The Seattle Times. Monica Soto's phone message number is 206-515-5632. Her e-mail address is msoto@seattletimes.com