Colleges and universities collected more than $827-million in royalties and other payments from licenses on inventions developed by university researchers in the 2001 fiscal year, according to data from an annual survey.

During that year, the 143 institutions that participated in the survey filed for more than 9,454 U.S. patents, negotiated and signed more than 3,300 licenses, and created more than 402 start-up companies. The data, which reflect activity from two years ago, were compiled by the Association of University Technology Managers.

About 15 percent of all revenues earned by survey participants went to a single institution -- Columbia University -- which reported royalties of more than $129-million. A good deal of Columbia's money came from licenses on patents that Columbia held for a genetic-engineering technique used by a number of biotechnology companies.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked second in revenues, with more than $73-million. About half of that came from the institute's cashing out its stock in two companies -- Akamai, an Internet business that went public in 1999, and Pracecis Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company that went public in 2000. MIT had received the stock as payment from the companies for rights to use the MIT inventions.

Seventeen other institutions earned at least $10-million in royalties, down from 19 a year earlier. Only 10 institutions reported royalties in excess of $20-million; a year earlier, there were 14 that did so.

The total for royalty income was also lower in 2001 than the $1-billion-plus reported in 2000, but it was substantially higher than the $641-million reported in 1999. The 2000 figure total was unusually large because it included some one-time payments for settling lawsuits.

While overall revenues were lower in 2001, technology-transfer activity appeared to be on the rise. Licensing offices that participated in the survey said that their researchers had reported a total of 11,259 inventions in 2001, up slightly from the 10,802 reported in 2000. Institutions also filed about 1,000 more applications for U.S. patents in 2001 than they did in 2000.

The top earners in the survey for fiscal year 2001 were:

Columbia University, $129,895,000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, $73,992,534
University of California system, $66,725,000
Florida State University, $62,077,749
Stanford University, $38,755,000
Michigan State University, $30,051,523
University of Rochester, $29,589,000
University of Florida, $28,589,460
New York University, $25,691,655
University of Washington, $25,027,192