The UC Board of Regents:
Records show that wealthy investors and influential businessmen with close ties to UCLA and one of the UC Regents — Alan C. Mendelson — are financially invested in companies that currently license university-owned patents under exclusive financial arrangements. Mendelson, who also is a trustee for the UC Berkeley Foundation and has investments of his own in businesses that profit from university-produced research, was one of the main backers of the Newco proposal and cast a vote in favor of it.The Newco program also could benefit companies like the ones Mendelson and his network of friends and investors own and work for. Many of the UC Regents are also close friends of investors who want greater access to university inventions under more favorable terms, and who want the university to subsidize early-stage business expenses and take financial risks by investing in technology startups.
Because what could possibly go wrong?
I guess that people such as your humble blogger are suckers for believing that any of our leading civic institutions still perform any legitimate civic functions anymore, and that their only real-world purposes at this stage of the empire's decline are risk mitigation and capital formation on behalf of America's job creators. It seems like an awfully cynical thing to say, but we live in cynical times, so there's that.
---Baron V
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