The Caltech Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) is responsible for the licensing and the transfer of technologies from Campus and JPL to the commercial sector. OTT protects and manages the intellectual property developed by faculty members, students, other researchers, and JPL technologists. Although the office was created relatively recently (1995) Caltech has a long tradition of protecting its inventions and has received over 2000 U.S. patents since 1980. Caltech receives more invention disclosures per faculty member than any other university in the nation. In the last 10 years licensing efforts have resulted in 40 to 50 patent licenses per year and OTT fosters start-up companies at a rate of about 8 per year; a very high number in view of the small size of the university.