I could make a comment on that. I don't know if I would personally support including patenting as part of the tenure process, because what invariably happens is you'll drive what I call vanity patents—people trying to file patents for the sake of having patents. I think a patent should only be filed if there's a commercial opportunity.
I think what would be more interesting in the university environment—and I've made noises about it with my senior administration in the past—is sort of a sabbatical, an entrepreneurial sabbatical for those faculty members who are involved in something that looks commercially interesting and validated through groups such as ours. When we want to work to promote a technology, quite often you can't divorce the lead inventor from the commercial activity, at least initially. But we also don't want to have our faculty members leaving the institution. That's not what we're trying to do either.
A happy compromise might be to offer periodic entrepreneurial sabbaticals to assist in commercialization.