When Laurel Corgard first walked onto the University of Minnesota campus in September 1986, the technology transfer industry as it is known today was still in its infancy stage. This September, Laurel will celebrate a monumental milestone: her 40th anniversary with the University. Today, as a patent administrative specialist, she is regarded as the "foundational cornerstone" of the patent team within the Technology Commercialization office.
But Laurel’s story is more than a milestone of personal dedication—it is a front-row seat to historical moments in American innovation.
In 1988, after two years in the Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA), Laurel transferred to what was then called the Office of Patents and Licensing. At the time, it was a quiet operation of about a dozen people. However, the landscape of innovation and higher education was undergoing a massive shift, driven by the landmark Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.
Before the Bayh-Dole Act, inventions created using federal research dollars belonged to the government, and few ever made it to the public. The Act flipped this process on its head, allowing universities and inventors to retain ownership of their inventions and actively commercialize them. As a result, universities were incentivized to turn lab discoveries into real-world products and services for public use.
As the University of Minnesota encouraged faculty to disclose their inventions, the workload aggressively expanded. To handle the surge, the University of Minnesota’s office created a brand new position, and Laurel stepped directly into the surging industry. Learning from the lead patent attorney and industry-specific paralegals, she gained experience with the complex nuances of federal compliance and the federal reporting database, iEdison.
Over the next 40 years, Laurel evolved alongside the office. She went from being the sole staff member managing patent data entry to anchoring what is now a highly optimized, four-person IP & compliance team, supported by a dedicated group of undergraduate students.
Laurel experienced several major changes in this rapidly evolving industry–navigating database migrations, transitioning from paper-packed filing cabinets to remote work, and shifting from meticulous hand-signed and notarized documents to modern electronic workflows. Through it all, including the current high-volume environment of the team that handles hundreds of patent filings and over a thousand legal documents annually, Laurel has remained the team’s steady anchor, mentoring generations of full-time staff and student workers.
With a modernized workflow and a bright future ahead, the Technology Commercialization office continues to protect and propel the University’s most valuable assets. As the team looks toward the next 40 years of innovation, they do so on the foundation that Laurel helped build, one patent at a time.