A company has plans to market a University professor’s invention after reaching a licensing agreement with the University’s Research Foundation and the University of Puerto Rico.

The late William Yen, a University physics professor, developed phosphors that can emit light in several colors and tints for up to 22 hours without a continued light source, Gennaro Gama, a senior licensing manager at the University of Georgia Research Foundation, or UGARF, said in an interview Thursday.

“Until recently, most phosphorescent materials in the commercial market only emitted the colors green or blue,” Gama said.

The long-persistence phosphors have many uses, Gama said. They can be used in signage and safety painting on roads and airports. They can also be used to manufacture highly efficient fluorescent light bulbs.

Phosphors can be used for artwork and novelty items as well, such as decorative rainbow-colored light bulbs or printing ink.

“We do not yet know the lifetime of this, but it has a shelf life,” Gama said. “It could last perhaps 100 years.”

Yen, who was considered a pioneer in the phosphorescence field, collaborated with Weiya Jia, who was a physics professor at the University of Puerto Rico, in developing the green and blue phosphors, Gama said.

“Federal law passed in 1980, dictates that inventions developed at universities through the use of federal grants, belong to those universities,” Gama said in an e-mail interview Monday.

As co-owners of the technology, the University and the University of Puerto Rico entered into a Joint Ownership Agreement, authorizing UGARF to market and license the product on behalf of both parties. The University of Puerto Rico approved and co-signed the final license with Performance Indicator.

Performance Indicator, a private technology company, develops and markets color change technologies for industrial and consumer products, according to its Web site. Jia is the vice president of the company.

UGARF spent two years negotiating a licensing agreement with Performance Indicator, Gama said. The average time is between six and 12 months.

“We both had distinct expectations,” Gama said. “We had to walk a very long way to meet in the middle.”

The non-exclusive licensing agreement is a transfer of the technology rights to Performance Indicator, Gama said. The negotiations settled the specific rights the University transferred to the company, the length of time they possess them and the agreed upon manner in which they are used.

The University will receive royalties on the invention, which is a success-based measure.

Yen became the chair of the physics and astronomy department in 1980, Richard Meltzer, professor emeritus in the department of physics and astronomy, said in a phone interview Monday.

“He developed a lot of fundamental ideas in the phosphorescence field and also a number of applied sorts of things, which this technological material is one example of,” Meltzer said.

Yen died in 2008, but his pioneering work in the field and friendly personality left a mark on the department.

“He was a very interactive sort of guy,” Meltzer said, who knew Yen since the late 1960s and became friends with him when he was hired at the University.

“He was very supportive of young scientists. He was a very people-oriented kind of person. When he went to meetings, he knew everybody in the meetings. After the sessions, he was talking to people about ideas and projects.”