James A. Poulos, III

Vice President of Technology Transfer and Commercialization

 Maryland Technology Development Corporation

James A. Poulos, III is a registered patent attorney.  His career in patent law began in 1980 as a self-employed patent researcher.   Mr. Poulos has written over 150 patent applications and has prosecuted at least a thousand applications.  Over 90% of these applications issued into US Patents.  From 1991-1998 Mr. Poulos was responsible  for the US patent portfolio of the multi-national company Zambon Group S.p.A. (Zambon).  Zambon is the largest Italian-owned pharmaceutical company in Italy. Mr. Poulos has prosecuted a patent application of Nobel Laureate, Giulio Natta.

Mr. Poulos joined the University of Maryland’s Office of Technology Liaison (OTL) in March 1998 as the Associate  Director for technology management. Mr. Poulos served as the Acting Executive Director of OTL from June 1999 to June 2000.   After a national search, Mr. Poulos was named the Executive Director of the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Maryland, College Park in June of 2000.   Since joining the office, Mr. Poulos has negotiated over 200 license agreements with commercial entities both within and without the state of Maryland.  During his tenure over 30 University spin-off companies have been created, including Quantum Photonics (College Park, MD), Little Optics (Columbia, MD) and RioRey, Inc. (Bethesda, Maryland).  These three companies have received over 85 million dollars in combined venture capital funding.

 Mr. Poulos received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from The University of Maryland, College Park, 1979.  Mr. Poulos studied law for one year at Loyola School of Law in New Orleans and Graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 1984. He has taken graduate courses in the fields of patent law (George Washington University) and molecular biology (University of Maryland, College Park) and life sciences.  He was an adjunct faculty member of the University of Baltimore Merrick School of Business in 1994-1995 rendering expertise as a patent attorney to the Lab-to-Market curriculum created at the University of Baltimore.                          

Mr. Poulos is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), The Maryland Patent Law Association, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), and the Licensing Executives Society (LES).  Mr. Poulos is a member of the University of Maryland Alumni Association and serves as a board member of the business incubator facility and the Conflicts of Interest Committee at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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