Feedback: academia's missing link - FT.com Luke Johnson wrote last week of the importance of uniting academics and entrepreneurs so that discoveries made in universities can be translated into commercial success. The topic struck a chord with many readers: This problem is one of several issues that continue to prevent the commercialisation of new ideas in the UK. In particular, the patent system in the UK is very ineffective. A UK patent does not provide protection but an entry ticket to the litigation process. William Elmitt Deeply embedded cultural distrust of private funding sources and the largesse of public/charitable monies for gilded academics conspire against entrepreneurial thinking in UK academia. Self-reliance In the US there is a well established infrastructure for institutions to monetise their discoveries which is absent in the UK, where universities think of government funding rather than how to maximise their own assets. The Research Excellence Framework, the latest exercise to benchmark the abilities of researchers in the UK, and to work out how to dole out money for research, places significant weight on the impact of the research. And that includes its commercial impact. Michael Kenward