Over the next year, Yu-han founded a small company called Blue Harbor Thermal.
Its purpose was to develop practical thermal-management products for medical and industrial electronics.
She wasn't trying to own every invention in the field.
She wanted to build a company capable of taking promising designs through engineering development, manufacturing validation, and commercial production.
Our interests overlapped.
She needed technology that could differentiate her products.
I needed a serious manufacturing partner willing to test whether VelaFlow could succeed outside the laboratory.
We began discussing a license.
From the beginning, I was careful.
The patent belonged to me.
Yu-han understood that.
She never suggested that because her company helped commercialize the technology, it should automatically own the underlying rights.
Instead, we negotiated a structure that would allow Blue Harbor to use the patent in defined applications under specified conditions.
The company would invest in development.
I would provide technical consulting and receive appropriate licensing compensation.
The arrangement would preserve the rights necessary for further research and certain public-benefit uses.
One provision mattered especially to me.
I wanted the ability to support qualified nonprofit and humanitarian applications, subject to appropriate safety, regulatory, and liability requirements.
The idea came from Dad.
He spent his life maintaining equipment used by patients who couldn't choose whether a machine would be reliable.
I didn't want to turn VelaFlow into a product available only to the wealthiest institutions if other responsible uses were possible.
That didn't mean giving away everything.
Research needed funding.
Manufacturing cost money.
Testing and regulatory work could be expensive.
And commercial investors deserved clarity about the rights they were acquiring.
But I wanted to distinguish between a sensible commercial license and surrendering every future decision to a single company.