MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The University of Minnesota regents will consider an overhaul of university policies for turning its faculty and staff’s inventions into products.

The regents are to discuss the change during their Thursday meeting. Turning university innovations into money-making products has become a priority as the university deals with falling state support.

It’s also become more urgent as the patent on the university’s most profitable product, the AIDS drug Ziagen, is set to run out in the United States in 2013.

Among the proposed changes to the policy would be to use more of the profits to incentivize faculty and departments to work hard to bring their ideas to market.

The university would also charge a 15 percent service fee on certain products to fund its Office for Technology Commercialization.

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