Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 24 May 2018
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2016: Higher Education Authority, University College Cork and Cork Institute of Technology
9:00 am
Mr. Diarmuid Collins:
As part of public policy on putting public research to work, we actually promote spin-outs where the university has developed intellectual property and patents. InfiniLED was a company spun out of the Tyndall National Research Institute. It was spun out by the university. As part of that spin-out, which happened in 2016, we got 15% equity for our share of the intellectual property going into the company. It was sold subsequently and purchased by Oculus, which is owned by Facebook. The company was bought for €30 million and, because of our shareholding, which had been slightly diluted to about 12.5%, the university got a share of the €30 million in income.
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