Intangitopia

Pharma deals 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 04:57:00 +0000

Last month Pharmaceutical Executive published a summary based on its annual panel of heavy hitters in business development on best practices in licensing and M&A for the year ahead. The discussion was built around the latest findings from Cambell Alliance's 2012 Survey of Dealmaker Intentions. The survey had many interesting conclusions, and I thought that I would summarize a few of their thoughts here - I recommend reading the full article.

Most attractive in-licensing therapy areas

In-licensors expects most deals to be made in oncology, cardiovascular, CNS, metabolic and respiratory drugs. Oncology has a unique characteristic in that interest is high at all levels of the development cycle, including early stages. In fact, the interest in doing deals in pre-clinical, Phase I and II was found to be higher than for those in Phase III. All other major therapeutic segments (except immunology) showed a preference for candidates in phase III. An interesting side note from David Thomas (BIO) was that oncology, CV and CNS have the lowest success rates (less than one in 10 compounds make it from phase I to commercialization).

Trends within individualized treatments

FDA has approved 3 drugs in the last 12 months whose mechanisms are intended for a specialized target sub-population. Because the ability now exists (in some disease areas) to target and individualize therapies for patients, the per patient costs can be higher but it is also more likely the payers will support price premiums for some guarantee of better performance among a defined patient group. J&J did a deal with the UK NICE, to obtain payer buy in, in which it guaranteed that if Velcade did not work in a patient, it'd pay back the NHS.

About asset valuation

A decade ago the approach in valuing a target incorporated a lot of material that frankly is irrelevant, such as the number of patents on file, the number of employed scientists, or the square footage of lab space. R&D is not a numbers game. Pfizer consistently spent the most money on R&D and employed the most scientists, yet the return from its effort was poor. Nowadays companies are valued more on the basis of their strong cash flow, and little credit is given for development stage assets. The early 1990s saw enormous valuations for "ideas" with early stage IPOs, but with investors unable to sort through the good from the bad and value assets appropriately. Many companies subsequently failed.

Deal-making with academia

Universities have been empowered and push very hard on the IP front, taking a major interest in leveraging intellectual capital to generate profit. The IP and know-how from academia is important in drug development but often represents a small piece of a very complicated value equation, currently there seems to be little understanding that their contribution may only be a small part of the very long and expensive process to bring products to commercialization. Data packages from academia are rarely done to industry standards. Negotiations have on the other hand started to change. For a long time, academic partners insisted on terms that were entirely one-sided: take all the patent rights, refuse exclusivity in partnering, and reimburse them for 75 percent of the overhead costs. Today, the approach is more similar to those made with small biotech partners: with upfront payments plus royalties linked to milestones. Many TTOs now hire people with background in venture, biotech or Big Pharma - this could be a sign of an improving relationship.

Tobias Thornblad

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Big Data development in Life Science

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:49:00 +0000

Big Data development in Life Science

Big Data is becoming an increasingly more popular concept and new companies are launched almost every week. The first to go public - Splunk - was recently valued at $3 billion when it launched earlier this year on Nasdaq. Many players besides Splunk are approaching Big Data and some of these include Wavii, Metamarkets, Palantir and IBM. It seems like there is a race to collect, curate and analyze the vast amounts of unstructured data out there. On the non-profit side, it is reported in the latest issue of Fast Company that the Wikimedia Foundation will complete its first phase of development of Wikidata in August. Wikidata will extract data from Wikipedia to create a database focused on facts and figures with less subjectivity.

At the same time, more data is becoming available from various sources. When Facebook launched its $100-billion initial public offering, its userbase surpassed 980 million users worldwide. This means that nearly one in seven of the world’s population seems to be comfortable sharing personal data over the internet. What started out as a social network where we shared photos has transformed into a forum where we are comfortable in sharing geographical coordinates of our current locations and even position on whether we are organ donors or not. It is perhaps not far fetched to predict that we will be comfortable to share even more in the future. In spite of this trend, most of us still are more circumspect when it comes to sharing genetic, physiological and medical information online. An editorial in this month's issue of Nature Biotech brings up this issue and states that one key reason for poor uptake could be that there is still no simple and transparent way to track how personal data are being used, let alone a means to opt into, or out of, research using the data.

Portable legal consent (PLC)

To tackle this problem a new type of consent process - Portable Legal Consent (PLC) - has been launched. The PLC aims to simplify informed consent and allow feedback of results to any participants. This will put donors in greater control of their own data, which will hopefully lead to more data being shared. The feedback mechanism is thought to provide an incentive for individuals to donate data since the patients in the 'traditional model' usually learn nothing of the research outcomes from their specimens or data, which is particularly true if the results are never published. This, however, demands that informed consent is overhauled.

NBT writes that in the United States: informed consent is based on a uniform 20-year-old, almost pre-internet set of regulations, colloquially known as the ‘Common Rule’. Under the Common Rule, the patient’s signature on the consent form following an ‘informing’ conversation creates a legal agreement that allows research (or medical procedures) to go ahead. The scope of research depends on the consent form; in some cases, biological specimens and associated data can be used only in the research described in the original consent. Alternatively, consent can be broader, extending to future research, within or without some limits. Most donations of tissue and data can be used only once, in the original research project. Any subsequent analysis, reanalysis or pooling with other data is breaking the law.

The PLC (http://weconsent.us) provides a solution by permitting research participants to contribute their data to a common consented environment enabling broad and multiple research uses. Importantly, patients can withdraw their data from the database at any time. The withdrawal does not operate retrospectively, so derivatives of the data, or even copies of it held on computer drives, are likely to remain available. Publications based on their data would also be unaffected by data withdrawal.

Creating the incentives to share personal data

A crucial element, besides trust, in building a successful platform where personal data is shared is of course to provide incentives to share. Google Health failed to attract users because of many reasons but one may have been that people saw no real benefit in uploading their data. One incentive for donating data or specimens to medical research could be learning about how the data has been useful for the research community. Another may be to get access to a network of patients with the same condition (PatientsLikeMe) or learning about their genetic profile (23andMe). With the latest trends in the Quantified Self movement there will likely be multiple other incentives to share data from consumer-diagnostic tests, biometric devices to measure glucose levels, heart rate and indications of stress. The latest issue of Entrepreneur writes that Quantified Self company FitBit says that the average user takes 43% more steps per day when they use their device. The biggest incentive, however, likely is the fact that FitBit users can track their progress online through infographics, pie charts and stated goals. For some products it may even be enough to just compile data into Facebook statuses to show friends and family how healthy you are (e.g. RunKeeper, WOD of the day, etc).

The question is not if we will share, it is when we will share our clinical data and where.

Tobias Thornblad

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IP activity in the pharma & biotech space during 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 05:56:00 +0000

Much of the Life Science blogosphere has focused on the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo v. Prometheus lately. The decision has jolted the biotech industry through a unanimous ruling that threw out two medical-testing patents and has questioned the very concept of what a law of nature is when it comes to medical testing. The case involved a group of drugs used to treat diseases such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. For patients taking thiopurine drugs for such immune system diseases, physicians must adjust the dose to make sure the drug works while side effects are avoided. The Prometheus patent described connecting the level of certain chemicals in the blood to the thiopurine dosage to balance between too high or too low dosage. This led justice Breyer to conclude that the Prometheus patents recited laws of nature, which has sparked a big discussion. Personalized medicine and companion diagnostics are examples of areas that are heavily affected by this and given the fact that thousands of patents for diagnostic tests have been issued in the past two decades - the court ruling could have dramatic effects on the biotech industry. One of the most cited examples is of course Myriad Genetics’ test for breast-cancer risk using information about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. To follow the debate I recommend visiting Patent Baristas, Patently BIOtech or Holman’s Biotech IP Blog.

On the pharma/biotech side of the industry there is also activity in the IP-realm. Due to the commotion around Prometheus, IP analysis around pharma/bio seems to have been in the background lately. Therefore, this month, Intangitopia is providing you with an overview of IP lawsuits, settlements and infringements in the pharma/biotech space covering Jan-June 2012:

As can be seen in the diagram above, most of the activity has been in the disease groups: 1) nervous system diseases, 2) nutritional and metabolic diseases, and 3) respiratory tract diseases. Below are summaries of the top IP news in media within these disease groups.

Nervous System Diseases

Indication Companies Products Top news description

Pain Merck & Co Inc Vioxx Merck Resolves Vioxx Litigation in Canada

Opioid Abuse/Pain BioDelivery Sciences International (BDSI), Endo Pharmaceuticals BEMA Buprenorphine BioDelivery Sciences Receives Patent Allowance Triggering $15 Million Milestone Payment from Endo Pharmaceuticals

Pain Zalicus Inc. Hydromorphone hydrochloride Settlement confirmed in litigation between Zalicus and Mallinckrodt and Watson Laboratories Inc

Parkinson's Disease Orion Corporation Stalevo Orion sues Mylan to enforce its U.S. patents covering the proprietary drug Stalevo

Post-Herpetic Neuralgia Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc, Endo Health Solutions Inc, Impax Laboratories, Inc. Lidocaine, Lidoderm Watson Announces Lidoderm Patent Challenge Settlement

Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis Genmab A/S -- Genmab Announces Patent Settlement Agreement for Ofatumumab

Sleep Disorders Mylan Inc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd Modafinil, Nuvigil Mylan Settles Provigil Litigation With Teva

Nutritional and metabolic diseases

Indication	Companies	Products	Top news description
Diabetes Mellitus	Lupin Pharmaceuticals Inc	Metformin hydrochloride	Lupin announces settlement with Santarus and Depomed for Glumetza Patent Litigation
Hypertriglyceridemia	Pronova BioPharma ASA, GlaxoSmithKline plc	Omacor	US District Court Rules in Pronova BioPharma's Favour on Lovaza Patents
Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus	Novo Nordisk Inc, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Depomed Inc, Santarus Inc, Mylan Inc	Victoza, Glumetza, Pioglitazone hydrochloride, Metformin hydrochloride	Depomed files patent infringement lawsuit against Watson

Respiratory tract diseases

Indication	Companies	Products	Top news description
Allergic Rhinitis	Merck & Co Inc	Nasonex	U.S. District Court Rules Against Merck in Nasonex Patent Lawsuit
Asthma	Mylan Inc	Levalbuterol hydrochloride	Mylan Announces Settlement Agreement in Litigation Relating to its Generic Xopenex
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease	Mylan Inc	--	Mylan Announces Settlement Agreement in Patent Infringement Litigation Relating to Sunovion's Brovana Product
Infant Respiratory Distress Syndrome	Cornerstone Therapeutics Inc	Curosurf	Court Orders Dismissal of Curosurf Case

Tobias ThornbladTwitter

Patent wars: Stripping the iPhone bare

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:47:00 +0000

The BBC has done a short video about patents in ICT. Not too bad actually.

More information can be found here.

Should secondaries be the primary comparison?

noreply@blogger.com (Marcus Malek) — Wed, 25 May 2011 22:35:00 +0000

In the last couple of months there have been some marvelous IPOs and acquisitions happening in the technology space. Facebook’s likely IPO is the elephant in the room but in the meantime there have been some shockwaves with, for example; LinkedIn and Skype.

Secondaries surging !

This has lead to a surge in the secondary trade (i.e. non-public trade between shareholders) of Groupon, Zynga and Facebook equity. Directly this has lead to discussions of regulations and complaints about “opaque markets”, overvaluation etc. I was also lucky enough to attend a number of talks in London over the last weeks, with VCs discussing these and similar issues. One thing I really embraced was the notion of how scarce this type of equity is and thus might merit a higher price.

So what has this got to do with IP? Well to me the same reasoning rings very true for IP and especially investing in IP. Valuation of IP receives a lot of complaints from many people (accountants and academia to mention some) and is seen as something opaque and in need of regulation. There have been many ( more or less unsuccessful) attempts at making the market transparent (e.g. Ocean Tomo, , IP-X, IPXI, Yet2) but nothing has become a de facto standard.

IP Secondaries surging !?

Regardless of this, a large number of IP transactions take place every year (for example Apple/Freescale, Microsoft/Novell, HTC/ADC or of course the never ending Nortel)showing that even without a primary market, the secondary market will give plenty of exit opportunities. The key, however, is that the assets must be of good quality and/or strategic – just as with the equity mentioned above (or have a missed a surge in secondary trading of Lunarstorm or Friendster?)

Then there’s also a constantly growing number of venture/PE backed IP vechicles being set up (how many of you have heard of Juridica, Digitude, IPGest, ?). And of course also some very large vechicles attracting large sums of venture money like Round Rock and RPX. And if that’s not enough, you should really take a look at IV’s investors , if that’s not the cream of the crop, then I don’t know what is and somehow they were able to be convinced to invest without public prospectuses.

So I guess my point is that comparing IP with something transparent and established like the stock market with extremely liquid trading and instant pricing models might not do IP justice. But instead comparing it to the “mysterious” market of secondary investment, where exits are fewer and larger as well as investments being not for everyone but instead for the seasoned players understanding the market.

Based on this I’m actually very interested in two upcoming workshops at CIP Forum next week, where large portfolio transactions and the possibility of a European IP market will be debated. Maybe they will prove me wrong..

Marcus Malek

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Invent With Nokia?

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Mon, 23 May 2011 12:31:00 +0000

IAM Magazine posted a question on Twitter last week in relation to the new effort by Nokia to invite independent inventors to submit their ideas for consideration, and possibly commercialization, by the Finish telecoms giant. The Invent With Nokia initiative.

The question was:
“Is Nokia's new initiative to attract innovative ideas from customers collaborative or exploitative?”

My short response to the question is that the Invent with Nokia initiative possibly is a bit of both. But that I am seeing this as an interesting step to further open up with the understanding that most of the innovation is not happening within Nokia.

Nokia already has established collaborations with universities around the world, through the Nokia Research Centers. Where a large portion is directed to forefront research in collaboration and sharing of resources with schools like Stanford, ETHZ and MIT.

By sharing resources, leveraging ideas, and tapping each other’s expertise we are able to create vibrant innovation ecosystems, multiply our efforts, enhance innovation speed and efficiency, and derive more value for our organizations and ultimately for our end-customers.

So I see the Invent With Nokia initiative as a natural way to leverage the collaborative and inventive brand even further.

Nokia explains the rational for this step:

With annual revenues of over €40bn and sales in more than 160 countries, we have an unparalleled market presence and geographic reach. In order to grow further, we need new technology, creativity and innovation.

Even though we have thousands of talented people and invest billions of dollars each year in R&D, we are eager to work with external companies who can bring diverse technology and new ideas to our business. Our successful track record of Strategic Alliances has built a strong collaborative spirit within Nokia.  Not only can we provide the infrastructure that could see your inventions in daily use around the world, you will find us straightforward and clear in your interactions with us.

There will likely be quite a lot of inventors submitting ideas to the initiative and some of them might even be really clever stuff. Much like the gains of similar initiatives, such as P&G’s Connect + Develop, the one really good idea might save the cost of the whole initiative.

However, and it is here where IAM Magazine’s question really comes to show, the financial reward for the inventor is likely to be slightly unclear.

Nokia explains

If Nokia notifies you within four months that it is interested in your invention, Nokia will have the right to apply for a patent based on your invention. In return, you will be eligible for a financial reward. Nokia’s business is very diverse, and the inventions we review are similarly broad. Whilst we take a common approach to valuing and rewarding our partners, there will be some variability. In principle you will be eligible for an award if we apply for a patent based on your invention. You may be eligible for a further award depending on the success of the product and the level of award you choose at the patent application stage.

Will this make innovators less likely to submit ideas for consideration? Probably not, but only time will tell.

Sure, innovators should be rewarded for their efforts, but would the invention have had any spread if not adopted by an industry giant. Probably not.

Johan Orneblad
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Further reporting here

Crowdsourcing as IP-strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:33:00 +0000

Crowdsourcing is a concept that is used ever more often when knowledge intensive industries are discussed. Arturas Vedrickas today briefly describes a location based social network known as Foursquare on the CIP FORUM blog that is planning to harness its large base of users. There are currently many interesting examples of crowdsourcing initiatives in the IT-industry where of course Wikipedia is one of my personal favorites. However, this concept is certainly spreading into other knowledge intensive industries such as the biomedical society. This is perhaps not surprising, given that the biotech revolution has transformed the whole pharma industry into a data driven reality where knowledge is key.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing refers to outsourcing tasks that would usually be performed by people within a company or institution to an outside 'crowd' of people, outside the organization. This way of harnessing the power of the many differs from other types of open innovation in that members of the crowd nowadays has grown accustomed to generally expect some kind of incentive or reward. This has been a rather quick transition given that the term 'crowdsourcing' itself was coined less than 5 years ago, by Jeff Howe writing for Wired magazine.

Harnessing the Global Brain in Life Science

Early efforts in the biomedical field to use this innovation strategy was - not surprisingly - implemented in the fields most closely similar to the IT-industry. Namely bioinformatics. Some of these efforts included BioJava, BioPerl, BioPython, Bio-SPICE and BioRuby. Two early initiatives, in 2000, without the word "bio" in their names were Screensaver Lifesaver and Folding@Home. Both of these harnessed the power of volunteers. Foldin@Home models the thermodynamics of protein folding, while the Screensaver Livesaver used 3 500 000+ volunteers to run molecular modeling simulations, docking potential ligands into the binding sites of known drug targets for various diseases.

Indianapolis based pharma giant Eli Lilly was one of the first Life Science companies to implement this way of thinking. In fact, it is more accurate to say that Eli Lilly was part of creating and defining the field of openness within Life Science. At the same time as Folding@Home and SL were launched, Sidney Junell, then head of Lilly, organized a group of executives to explore new ways of working. Impressively, no fewer than three successful open innovation companies—InnoCentive, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, YourEncore, in Indianapolis and Cincinnati, and Collaborative Drug Discovery, based in Burlingame, California—sprang from these discussions. For the past decade, Eli Lilly has maintained a leading position in the Life Science field of internet-led open innovation.

Several interesting initiatives have sprung up over the last few years in this industry. Within genomics, 23andMe (a model I have written about here on Intangitopia in the past) is a company that accumulates data from its customers through crowdsourcing. Customers of the personal genomics startup who submit samples of their saliva for genotyping have the opportunity to take part in surveys, which, when combined with their genetic information, can provide useful information to the wider group about genetic linkage. This approach of course becomes even more powerful still when genetic data are combined with contributions from patients. For Parkinson's disease 23andMe tries to achieve this through to collecting genetic data from individuals in a partnership with PatientsLikeMe and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Patients Like Me, in turn, is also a crowdsourcing site that allows its - by now 80 000 - members to share details of symptoms and treatments with each other, as well as with the research and medical communities. The reward in this case is to learn more about one's condition through the experience of others.

Business implications and using crowdsourcing as innovation strategy

Given the intellectual property difficulties that is generated by the volunteer computing models (Folding@Home and Screensaver Livesaver), these have largely been embraced by the academic and not-for-profit sectors. But what about the other models: are these also incompatible with IP? Of course not.

A recent example of an implemented corporate model for harnessing crowd-sourcing is that of Life Technologies (LT). The company announced in December a $7 million crowdsourcing initiative called the Life Grand Challenges Contest. Focus of the contest is on LT's new Personal Genome Machine acquired from Connecticut–based startup Ion Torrent. The sequencing technology costs $50,000 to buy and can sequence a sample at a cost of $500 in just two hours. But that is apparently not good enough for Jonathan Rothberg, founder and CEO of Ion Torrent. The first three $1-million challenges in the contest ask innovators to devise ways to make Ion Torrent's technology even faster, cheaper and more accurate.

Implementing crowdsourcing in your IP-strategy

A model that I have seen successfully implemented in the IP-strategy of a large biotech company actually used crowdsourcing. This particular company often used the Innocentive platform for this very purpose. Innocentive connects a community of solvers with seekers (companies that post technically challenging research or management problems). Any individual may register as a solver. Solvers pay no fees, but most formally register for a challenge before they receive the full, confidential outline of the project. While seekers pay to register on the site and again to register each challenge. If a problem is solved, pre-defined reward(s) is/are paid to one or more solvers out of the registration fee. Intellectual property is thus protected under secrecy agreements (formal registration for solvers) and transacted to the seeker as a reward is paid to a solver.

When the company had made a new discovery it posted the problem (not its solution/discovery) on Innocentive. This way, the company was typically able to "purchase" additional solutions to the same problem by paying out Innocentive rewards. An approach that was much cheaper than inventing these solutions in-house. Patent applications covering the various solutions would then be filed and consequently a much stronger position against invent-around risks resulted.

Alternative IP-strategies and IP-based business will be discussed during CIP FORUM in May.

(Btw, don't miss the early bird fee before the end of March)

Looking forward to see you there.

Tobias Thornblad

The new wealth of nations?

noreply@blogger.com (Marcus Malek) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:12:00 +0000

Borrowing the (in my mind bold) theme from CIP Forum 2011 and tying on Johan's previous post on patent filing, I'll try to give an my angle at this.

Johan touches upon a very interesting point, not only tied to IP but I assume business in general - when (or maybe if) will Asia (China) become the new epicenter. And that's of course where CIP Forum predicts that it will be the epicenter of intangibles rather than manufacturing. These are big question, but I'm a simple economist who likes graphs - so here's my stab at it.

Quantity - YES

Johan shows one strong indication of IP becoming more important to Chinese companies and this is probably another strong sign of China trying to move away from "made in China" to "invented in China". Two Chinese tigers are ZTE, now the worlds 4th largest handset company, and of course Huawei. But besides their business success, they are also the 2nd and 4th top PCT filers.

So it's clear - Chinese have understood IP and are going after it massively. And as Johan showed, so have the Koreans, while US, EU and Japan keep a fairly steady state.

Quality - Hmm.. let's find out

So let's try and look at whether this seems to be quality. And of course this is the million dollar question.

Trying to answer the modest "wealth of nations" question, I've at least found one proxy which feels objective, namely the World Bank. Diggin through their data I've found data for royalty and license payments and receipts, on an annual country basis.

As with any model or data - it's not perfect, but let's have a look at some results. I will present payments, income and balance for US, Germany, Japan, China and Korea. This will hopefully be a decent proxy for US, EU, "Old Asia", "Booming Asia", "Next Gen Asia".

Data Analysis - Royalty and License; payments, receipts and balance, 1997 - 2009.

This first picture will show us that all countries are receiving incomes but that it's very unevenly distributed with the US as the clear leader. With a very large order of magnitude, Japan (2nd largest) still 4x smaller than USA.

The second picture tells a slightly different story, showing that all count

ries have increasing payments. Again the US have largest payments.

Two interesting aspects of this would be that a) IP is a global asset b) the trade of IP is growing.

Looking closer at Japan, Korea and China we can see that the trends look quite similar. But let's take the analysis one step further and look at them on a country by country basis.

Starting with China - the outlook is quite dismal. Although there are some receipts, the annual licensing/royalty deficit is close to 10 Billion USD.

Looking now at Korea - seen as many as the real tiger and truly booming in the business space (especially in consumer electronics and telecom) lead on by Samsung ,LG, Hynix, Hyundai. Still the annual deficit is close to 4 Billion USD. And sure, royalty incomes are increasing fast, but payments even faster as the deficit is growing year-on-year.

Now ending on a hi-note with Japan currently with a positive balance of approximately 5 Billion USD. But although looking strong now, "break even" was reached less than 10 years ago.

Trying now to tie it all together, let's look at the all countries and perhaps the most important metric of all - payment balance.

This picture really says it all in my mind. The US are just miles ahead whereas the others are struggling and actually only Japan having an annual surplus.

I'd also like to highlight 2009 as an "odd" year in the data, where many changes happened. Maybe it's a freak thing or maybe it's tied to the financial climate, who knows. But before that the analysis was simple - everyone is paying Japan and US more and more money every year.

Closing thoughts

What I wanted to show with this exercise was that although Asian countries (mainly Korea and China) are booming in terms of patent filings and general corporate growth - they are still very much trailing in terms of IP royalty payments.

It could be tempting to draw the "simple" conclusions and say that their IP is worse or likewise saying that in terms of patent holdings - they are still miles behind the likes of Sony, Panasonic, Siemens, IBM, HP etc.

And maybe the truth is somewhere in between, i.e. that what you don't have in quality you make up for in quantity. I.e. when big IBM (with tens of thousands of patents) knocked on little ZTEs door - you'd pay up, regardless of quality.

I guess what you can say is that even if Asia seems to be catching up in the administrative arena (i.e. filing patents) they still seem to be losing the battle in the business arena.

Marcus Malek

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China on the rise

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Statistics released from WIPO on 9 February shows that China is rapidly speeding up in its patenting activities. This is both encouraging and at the same time worrisome for western companies.

The total number of new PCT filings totaled at about 162,900 in 2010, which is a 5% increase from 2009. It is positive to see that what possible cutbacks the recent downturn did put on the filings might now be changing. That said, the filings originating from the US did go down ever so slightly together with United Kingdom.

On the positive side, Germany, the third largest PCT filer had an increase with just over 2%. The country also has some of the largest entities filing through the PCT system. Robert Bosch ranked 6th and Siemens 12th.

The graph shows the five countries with the highest number of PCT applications filed in 2010. The five, USA, Japan, Germany, China, Korea might not come as a surprise, and they also account for 71% of all new filings, as shown in the graph further down.

Sweden rank as number 10 on the list, but has taken a serious cutback in number of new filings with 12% down from last year. Mathias Loqvist at Awapatent says to the Swedish newspaper DN that this might be because of some companies file more qualitative patents. Sure, this could explain some of it, but I find it hard to see it account for all. He also adds the explanation that new ownership structures also could have effect on where the patent is initially filed.

Despite the relatively low filing rate for a country of China’s size it is interesting to see that they have increased their PCT filings with whopping 56% over the last year. A large part of the explanation can be attributed to the two telecoms players ZTE Corp and Huawei ranking up as the second and fourth largest filers in the world.

The future

The rise of the Asian, especially Chinese, filers is probably not a one off occurrence and I believe we will see a further rapid increase in new patent filings originating from China and Korea. The telecoms actors which have appeared on the world scene over the last years to challenge the existing dominant players have been exposed to the patent risks and will probably be even more so in the future. They are very much in the same situation as Nokia was in the mid 90’s when they really started to understand the power of patents.

To be able to be competitive and not needing to stack up a too hefty royalty on their products the new players need patents they can counter with themselves to reach cross-licenses. I do believe that we will see a totally different balance of filings in just 5 years, though they still have not yet surpassed the US economy.

Johan Orneblad
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The role of Open Intellectual Property Platforms

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:03:00 +0000

Intangitopia has unfortunately remained dormant for quite a while now with all authors being busy with their jobs. This has certainly been true for myself too as I recently changed jobs to work in a startup within the medical device industry. But since I still do some research on the topic IP strategy within the Life Science industry I thought that I should write a blog post based on my latest article (co-published with Ulf Petrusson and Henrik Rosén at the Center for Intellectual Property, University of Gothenburg).

Global Technology Markets – the role of open intellectual property platforms

In the article we analyze the business phenomena where multiple stakeholders collaborate, package and transact upon technology in systems with ‘venture-market hybrid’ characteristics. We term these complex interactions, including the structures and stakeholders who build and participate in them, ‘open IP platforms’ in lack of a previous descriptive term. As many of our Intangitopia readers will recognize this concept captures much of the processes that are seen in open innovation, distributed innovation, open source, public-private partnerships and crowd-sourcing concepts. Activities on these platforms typically include collective gathering, creation and development of knowledge assets to which openness is regulated through the determined level of access, ownership and utilisation rights. We analyse how IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights) and contracts operate as a set of self-regulatory tools in the construction of platforms where technology is accessed openly but still is priced on what could be described as technology markets.

The impact of these platforms on new and developing technology intensive markets is evident and growing, though it is not yet fully clear what it is that drives the creation of such platforms, how the specific characteristics of the platforms should be understood, and what kind of markets arise as a result of these platform interactions, whether on the platform itself or in a market context where the platform participants can act as a single entity. If one wishes to understand the future of knowledge based business it will be necessary to understand and begin to answer these questions, as it is our strong belief that relating to open IP platforms, whether through participating or acting on the markets shaped by the platforms, will increasingly become a necessity. For this reason, the article presents a first attempt at answering some of these questions, by outlining the trends that have driven the emergence of the business phenomena we define as open IP platforms, and by presenting an initial concept for a framework model to understand and classify these platforms by their common characteristics.

A new collaborative logic - case study: GSM

A case study of the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) platform has been incorporated to illustrate a transition over time as a new logic for collaborative, market-based development coalesces. We describe a historic development that views patents as monopoly interventions in the free operation of the market. Something we argue to be a danger that need to be limited or surrendered if a common standard is to be developed. Our literature review shows a perspective on the patent as a tool through which actors can build a standard or platform for developing the standard as notably absent; at best, patents are seen as a necessary evil incentivizing innovative contribution. While it would be going much too far to say that there is not an inherent danger in the combination of strong individual IPR-based protection and the technology lock-in effects of standardization, it is our view of that it is possible and necessary to see patents as the building blocks enabling collaborative platforms such as GSM.

Framework

To further understand the underlying building blocks and enabling legal tools that provide the foundation for open IP platforms, we suggest a framework. The ambition to build platforms can only be approached by understanding the building blocks that create the platforms and design the platform characteristics. These building blocks can take the form of relationships or tacit connections, but our focus remains on the explicit legal instruments that build the platforms, and the role of IPR’s in the platform as constructive elements.

In the article we present frameworks for measuring the following parameters;

· Level of system/tool leverage

· Level of collaboration

· Level of public responsibility

· Level of platform governance

· Level of IPR claims

By applying the framework to the Innovative Medicines Initiative platform the tools that govern openness and stimulate creation of new knowledge markets are made visible based on the information in;

· IPR policies;

· Collaboration policies;

· Policies on exploitation of background and foreground;

· Membership fees and financing policies;

· Secrecy policies;

· Working guidelines and processes;

Application of the framework – Case study: Innovative Medicines Initiative

Our case study results shows that a novel creation of knowledge markets can be argued to occur whenever IP transactions – that provide access rights - take place between participants in IMI. By intellectually categorizing utilization of the generated project results in pre-competitive arenas (e.g. clinical trials and preclinical research) as IMI Research Use, an internal market is created where commercialization is not the end goal. The altruistic motives behind making tools available at little or no cost for the purpose of ensuring that pharmaceuticals are safe may be questioned by tool-supplying actors who do not normally perform clinical trials themselves. But the fact remain that an internal knowledge market with different conditions than standard commercially negotiated terms is the result. And by using the same research data with the intent to commercialize them (IMI Direct Exploitation) as therapeutic, diagnostic, screening, or recombinant tools - another knowledge market with completely different norms emerges.

The third, and arguably most radically different, ownership and access norms result when the generated results fall within the IMI Sideground definition. The outcome in this case can be interpreted as separating the generated results from the platform altogether and join the other assets of the creator’s proprietary portfolio, which have not been brought onto the platform. This means that the owner of Sideground can commercialize the results without having any access right obligations specified in the IMI IP Policy.

Since the rules and norms that govern the scope of the three knowledge markets are determined, before accession to a project, when drafting the Project Agreement – drafting this plays a major role. Successfully negotiating terms favorable to one’s self-interests is thus likely to be seen as a key activity for each participant. Developing the ability to clearly objectify and define Background, before negotiations are started, as well as implementing an intellectual asset management system to capture valuable results are consequently imperative factors to create strong market positions in these internal knowledge markets.

Conclusions

We see a development where intellectual property is increasingly used to claim early research. If we are to have platforms that increasingly make title claims on academic results, those platforms must also be capable of managing a structured contribution to the public domain to ensure that it is not impoverished by shortsighted commercial approaches. Both the ICT and Life Science markets are increasingly characterized by complex transactions of IP and cross-licensing, and we therefore need to develop and strengthen mechanisms for openness such as FRAND. This will be the only way to support proportionality and limit destructive ransoming of these platforms.

Our presented IMI and GSM examples demonstrate these issues from different perspectives. The GSM history, which by any measure is a successful collaboration, shows how a lack of structural clarity and central responsibility in open IP platforms can lead to unilateral royalty demands and the rise of complexities when trying to navigate the patent landscapes. In the case of IMI we can identify how mechanisms for sophisticated claiming of early stage research result. But also how this creates higher demands on the capabilities of universities and academic research institutions to wield these mechanisms appropriately and safeguard the public interest of independent and uninfluenced research.

Our collective abilities to develop open IP platform will in many ways define which kind of businesses that will be created and which business climate we will generate. The specifics of how to constructively develop these platforms to generate an appropriate business climate; how to safeguard public interests, build up public domain, ensure open and functioning markets, manage complex knowledge transfer and technology interdependence, etc., is a future discussion that we believe is both inevitable and vital to the construction of a functioning knowledge economy

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

For the article in its entirety, please see:

Ulf Petrusson, Henrik Rosén & Tobias Thornblad: Global Technology Markets - The Role of Open Intellectual Property Platforms: Review of Market Integration August/December 2010 vol. 2 no. 2-3 333-392

IP Business Congress - Day 1 Round up

noreply@blogger.com (Marcus Malek) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:27:00 +0000

I have the great opportunity to visit this years main IP event - the IP Business Congress held in Munich.

The conference is doing a good job of bringing together "who's who" within the, seemingly, small world (probably home to readers of this blog) of generating value from IP. This post will be a (short) summary and some thoughts after the first day.

As a reflection - the crowd is slightly different than at last years CIP Forum and the focus of the two events is also slightly different, but also noticeable - IP as a business asset vs. Innovation / Knowledge Economy. This resulting in more service providers, brokers and licensing executives than NGO's and University / Tech Transfer.

The evolving IP Business Market

This was the first topic of the day featuring heavyweights debating recent developments. Panelists included Intellectual Ventures' Vincent Pluvinage, GE's Carl Horton and Marshal Phelps

Pluvinage started of giving a lecture derived from his last IAM contribution "Patent Power". He made a really good point of showing that ubiquitous broadband access is the real driver of getting China and India involved in the Innovation/IP setting. He used a very illustrative example from his China trips a decade back when a chinese fiber optics contractor said that "1 meter of fibre is cheaper than 1 meter of noodles - one feeds the stomach, the other one the brain". I personally really enjoy Vincent's data/finance driven style and also encourage you to read his article.

Further on Phelps gave food for thought on non-monetary valuation of IP with examples from MSOFT and IBM. Both cases presented very impressive numbers and two stories. IBM as the real income center with 1800+ cross licenses and 2B USD generated from 35M USD costs. MSOFT the slight opposite as, in Phelps own words, he managed to sign 600 peace-treaties, when growing their cross license count from zero.

My main take-away from the first session was however Wayne Sobon, head of IP at Accenture. Wayne was given the task to talk about IP Valuation and in my mind he did an excellent job and raised some good views using trade-offs and Apple as examples. What was also encouraging was the way he talked about the difference of IP and IPR's (as well as general IA) and how that affects the value and context. A great valuation example (without metrics) using Apple was the thought experiment whether they could have made mor money outlicensing iPod IP rather than having (the status quo) of no one being allowed to produce an iPod copy.

IP and SMEs

Was the topic for the second keynote/panel discussion, apparently brought in by popular demand.

Although perhaps not addressing the issues of typical SMEs, they had gathered a very inspiring panel of small companies entirely relying on IP for success, as well as Andrew Watson serving with "color commentary" from a SME advisor perspective.

Two of the companies were Philips display spin-out Liquavista and Spanish bio SME since 25 years Ingenasa. Although telling very IP-savvy stories, Ambature ,headed up by ex-HP head of IP Joe Beyers, was a real poster child for IP based business and had some amazingly IP savvy procedures. For example: aligning research / engineering to fit certain claims as they go through , having investors waive IP rights to fight conflicts of interest.

All of us are of course not ex heads of IP from HP but it was anyhow inspiring to see how someone who really knows IP and more importantly IP in a business setting, put it into practice.

A topic that was brought up in both morning sessions was SME's in relation to BigCo and also in relation to the patent system, patent reform. No real breakthrough things were said, although I liked Carl Horton (head of IP GE) had a great point when saying" GE is so large that they could do without patents, they could use market power to take out smaller companies - IP is really for the SMEs, it's the only way SMEs can challenge and win against BigCo"

Is the next decade - the decade of IP in Asia?

And some finishing words on one of the breakout sessions, handling the emerging field of IP monetization and IP awareness in mainly China, Korea and Taiwan, but also sharing insights into Japan.

One thing which worried all Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese companies were NPEs, and how to come to grips with them. As seen in Patent Freedom research they are more and more becoming a target of NPE's. Although they cannot really (just as any other company) not counter fight the NPEs more companies are joining RPX and the like.

Finally - two interesting developments in Taiwan and Korea where the PTOs use funds to run something similar to a catch-and-release scheme for all national companies. I.e. gathering IP and making sure all national companies have access to the same IP. This is in my mind a great initiative but it still does not address the issue, also brought up by Japanese panelist Yoshi Ryujin, that in order to really monetize their IP Asian companies will still turn to the US market.

For more info (tweets / links) from IPBC try this link.

Tune back later this week for more IPBC updates.

Marcus Malek

Twitter: @marcusmalek

Intangitoia picks - Sounds like branding at TEDxTokyo

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:27:00 +0000

Following up on yesterday's post with this short and condensed video where Jakob Lusensky explains in 12 minutes what the music branding is all about. Highly recommended.

Johan Orneblad
Follow me on Twitter

Sounds like branding

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

To use music in connection with branding is not a new thing and everyone will instantly recognize the jingles or sound logos of Coca-Cola or McDonalds. However this is only a small portion of the great opportunities that music has to offer to brands and that brands have to offer to music.

The recent book “Sounds like branding” by Jakob Lusensky, a Swedish DJ and executive at the branding agency Heartbeats International, focuses in on the opportunities and potential value creating prospects in the intersection of music and brand identity.

He looks at this from two ways, both that the brands by for instance through offering music CDs in the stores, as Starbucks, increases the distribution channels and for some even cuts out the record labels fully. The other aspect, which I find much more intriguing, is how brands can tap in to the credibility value built up by the artists, both directly to their fans and also more generally in society.

The four Es
Music is of course only one of the ways in which a brand can take a more strategic approach to its brand image, and as Jakob puts it:

“Music is something that people connect with, enjoy discussing and sharing with others. Music preference relates to and can reveal a person’s personality. Brands are becoming aware of the possibility to emerge as an ambassador of this social media, the positive effect it can have on their brand image, and how it can attract the attention of people in product and brand marketing.”

He bring in the concept of the four “Es”; Emotions, Experiences, Engagement and Exclusivity to position a brand and guide it in their efforts to collaborate and connect with fans and customers. A concept he uses to guide us through the book.

Consumers become fans
The interesting transition where the consumer more and more becomes a fan to a brand, is something that we already have seen with for instance Apple. The computer hardware company has since the launch of iPod, [video pres with Steve J] become more of a movement with dedicated fans being both advocates of the brand but even more so committed followers of a lifestyle where the white headphones just are one of the style signifiers.

Package a feeling
One of the things that I find especially interesting with this book is how a brand can capture and communicate the core values or feelings that is connected to the brand identity. Jacob Luensky exemplifies with the hotel chain Clarion Hotels which put together a soundtrack to be played in the lobbies and also via the internal sound system in the hotels. A representation of this soundtrack was then sold on a CD for the customers to bring back home.

One other example of a customized music and branding experience is Absolute’s “Sound of Ice” radio channel that Absolut Ice Bars are playing, irrespectively where in the world you are. It was created to give the bar goes a consistent and enhanced experience in all their locations.

The book
To say something more specific about this book which was sent to me for review, I find it interesting but slightly too focused on the processes that a brand should use when thinking about introducing music in to the branding mix. This is however not that surprising since I understand it as a way for Heartbeats international to inform about their services.

As a brand owner or artist, either thinking about these issues on a daily basis will find the book highly useful For the rest of us, more generally interest in the concept, the two white papers on the book’s homepage will bring you far along the way.

White paper 1 - Social music revolution
White paper 2 - Sounds like branding

Johan Orneblad
Follow me on Twitter

Personalized medicine - a growing market

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 08:11:00 +0000

In March, I wrote about how personalized medicine is becoming an increasingly important concept in the biotechonomy worldwide. This development is now becoming more apparent and actors seem to be moving in this direction. One of the driving actors pushing this development certainly is insurance companies. Against this background, it is interesting to reflect upon how the U.S. health reform that President Obama signed into law last month. This is certainly one of the most comprehensive legislations concerning healthcare provisions in U.S. history. Obviously the health reform will have a tremendous impact on innovation for its many stakeholders, although some may feel more that they will reap more benefits than others will.

Health reform impact on new biotech business

April's edition of Nature Biotech (Vol 28 No 4) reports that "In return for supporting the bill and stumping up $90 billion in fees and discounts on Medicaid and Medicare pricing, the drug industry receives tax breaks, a biosimilars pathway and a massively expanded drug market." A key question for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) has been the exclusivity term for biosimilars, which in the reform was left intact at 12-years exclusivity. Another advantageous factor for pharmaceutical companies was that the industry managed to avoid suggested restrictions on drug price and drug importation. It is easy to conclude that all these factors will provide economic drivers for private biotech innovation. Much of the health reform, however, targets - a widely discussed subject in the U.S. - which is health insurance.

By enfranchisement of the many U.S. citizens previously uninsured, not only does the health reform provide societal benefits by progressing towards universality of healthcare access - but it simultaneously expands the U.S. healthcare market with more than 30 million people. For biotech and pharmaceutical companies such a market expansion is very good news and The RPM Report industry newsletter estimates that it could result in $115 billion in new business over 10 years.

How the bill drives the demand for life science innovation

Business models of health insurers in the U.S. have - ironically - been the most profitable when these actors successfully have circumvented the difficult and expensive burden of dealing with sick people. But the new bill prevents insurance companies from excluding coverage to children with pre-existing disorders and it forbids insurance to be dropped when a person becomes ill. I don't think it is far-fetched to say that this is somewhat of a game changer for these actors since their business models now will have to bear more of the financial risk and burden of the sick and vulnerable. This - at least to me - is very interesting from a business model building perspective but perhaps more interesting is the new demand that these actors will create for reducing costs associated with life science innovation.

From an insurer's point-of-view, a number of demands are likely to result;

Innovations to diagnose patients at an early-stage
Innovations to effectively prevent patients falling ill in the first place
Innovations to reverse disease
Innovations to effectively select patients that are likely to benefit from treatment at all
Innovations to effectively select which patients that are the most likely to benefit from which drug

To me, the bullet point list above shortly translates into some of the most common biotech products such as diagnostic tools, screening methods, drugs, and vaccinations. But it is interesting that more or less all of these have a personalized medicine touch to them and it doesn't seem unlikely that this will be of the major effects of the new health reform. Naturally this will stimulate creation of new biotech assets such as biomarkers, drug targets and candidate inhibitors/activator molecules, which in turn will lead to new life science innovation (six of the 26 FDA approved drugs during 2009 are personalized medicines).

New development towards personalized medicine in the U.S.

Against this background, Medco Health Solutions provides an interesting business model to learn from. In February, it acquired the San Francisco-based genomic medicine company DNA Direct to strengthen its commitment to personalized medicine. The acquisition has similarities to the strategic partnership that was signed between CVS Caremark of Woonsocket and Generation Health, at the end of last year. Medco's aim is to help physicians and payors better match individuals to therapeutics and improve clinical outcome while saving money, by becoming a one-stop health service shop. Nature Biotech reports that several trends help draw pharmacy-benefit companies into personalized medicine. Firstly, there has been an explosion in the number of genetic tests. Medco estimates there to be a 1000 genetic tests, which in many cases the full benefits are not extracted due to inappropriate interpretation and lack of knowledge. A second factor - closely connected to the discussion above - is a growing interest from payors. CVS Caremark states that "To our clients, the insurance companies and self-insured employers, being able to provide tests that target drugs to individuals is of great interest". Thirdly, the main driver is cost reduction. The need to cut healthcare costs is most likely behind the surge in personalized medicine. PricewaterhouseCooper estimates that the core market for personalized medicine - diagnostics and therapeutics - is already worth $24 billion and expected to grow 10% annually, reaching $42 billion by 2015.

What will big pharma say?

What I find particularly interesting in all this is the predicament that this new focus on personalized medicine creates for pharmaceutical companies. Personalized medicine will transfer the control position for how and when drugs are used, something that used to be controlled by drug-label indications and physicians (in consultation with big pharma). Will big pharma remain on the sidelines or will they enter the arena?

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

The digital economy is all about the content

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:12:00 +0000

Yesterday I and about 100 other people attended a seminar here in London, jointly arranged by Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute (QMIPRI) and the Institute of Computer and Communications Law. The focus was the Digital Economy bill which is trying to address the ever-present issue of rights holders’ rights and possibilities for enforcement on internet.

However, the discussion yesterday circled much around if and how internet users could be cut off or suspended from their internet connection because they had been involved in illegal file sharing. The issue is an important one and I have trouble seeing the proportionality in restricting access to internet for what in many cases are small amounts of direct loss in sales revenue, which apparently is one of the suggestions in the bill. Jim Killock from the Open Rights Group, did also point out that downloading was more like trespassing than theft. This is true, but it is still illegal in the system that we have today. The discussion about changing the copyright system is partly a different and much bigger one.

I do however believe that the discussion we are having today about illegal file sharing and how to enforce it will pass over as a result of technical development and new ways of consuming content.

Carrot and stick
The industry representative, Richard Mollet of British Phonographic Industry (BPI), did go about quite hard on why enforcement was important. It was an expected point of view and he had a fair point in that enforcement is part of a system where that is the stick in one end and legal services, such as Spotify, are the carrot in the other end. Both sides need to exist.

Richard Mollet’s argument continued in the lines of that the rights holders were to scared to put out content in this uncertain environment without strong enforcement measures. This is where I do not agree.

Business model innovation
One of the first portable MP3 players was released some 12 years ago. Steve Jobs presented the first iPod in 2001. This is of course all known and the discussion about the rights holders not understanding the potential in the technology and that the old business model of selling content on physical carriers was and is outdated, that discussion is not new. What still surprises me however is the total lack of innovation in new business models and product offerings when it comes to rights intense industries such as publishing, film and music.

Intellectual property in the form of copyright is one of the most easily distributed forms of property. It lacks the need to be bundled with physical carriers, it can be packaged in various forms and the legal wrapping can be crafted in just any way.

To be fair, there are several services and platforms offering copyrighted material digitally and with consent from the rights holders. Spotify and Hulu are two examples of this.

I do however believe that there is much more that could be done, if just the interest was there. The technology is there, the consumers are there. The content is not nearly there.

The legal dimension
The issue has of course also a legal dimension, something the third speaker, Graham Smith of Bird & Bird, pointed out. It is far from certain from a legal perspective what is actually legal and what is not and how to enforce it. It is even harder from a consumer’s perspective to do this distinction. It is can be argued that this becomes the result if you let the development happen by itself and not being part of crafting the norms in the marketplace.

As I pointed out earlier, IP in general and copyright in particular are well suited to be developed in to new contractual models. The content can without any particular problem be packaged in just about any way. To look at the problem from the perspective of enforcement of content that has been distributed and copied by norms created by the users themselves, will probably almost always be messy. Especially when the behavior of consumers has been more or less accepted for over 10 years.

If the rights holders on the other hand are the directors on the distribution end and take advantage of the versatility of the content and distribution methods that could be used, I believe that the need for enforcement would be radically less and the revenues would be greater. It just takes someone to be brave enough to let go of the known models and revenue streams and focus on how to embrace the technology and meet the consumer need in a legal way.

Johan Orneblad
Follow me on Twitter

Business models and open IP platforms in personalized medicine

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Personalized Medicine is a frequently discussed concept in healthcare thought to hold great value for the future. Since I am currently involved in a project where the technology could provide utilities for personalized medicine while at the same time co-authoring a paper on open IP platforms, I thought that a blog post that combines the two worlds could be interesting to write - so here it goes.

What is personalized medicine and why does it matter?

Medical practice relies on evidence-based medicine - the development of standards of care based on epidemiologic studies of large cohorts - a practice that has been around more than 50 years. The rationale is that a statistical approach to large cohort studies enables reduction of background noise, i.e. ignoring individual differences in the data points. Traditionally, individual care by a medical practitioner is built on the patient's family history, social circumstances, environment and behaviors - meaning that the doctor's personal observations, skills and intuition have been crucial factors.

Personalized medicine seeks to provide an objective basis for consideration of individual differences by the systematic use of genetic information about each individual patient to select or optimize the patient's preventative and therapeutic care. A simple example would be to be recommended to take a genetic test before being prescribed a certain drug to shows whether you have a genetic profile that makes you more responsive to drug A or drug B (used for the same disease). Obviously tremendous health-economic gains could also be expected where one example is hypersensitivity to gluten (for which Phadia is developing diagnostic technology) that currently takes an average time of eleven years to diagnose in the US according to Phadia.

Two examples of business models personalized medicine could enable in the future

1. Insurance model: Let's say that you consider buying a life insurance. Obviously, it is in your best interest as well as in your insurance company's best interest that you live a long and healthy life. With the latest advances in genomics your insurance company provides you with a voucher to get your genome sequenced and get access to a web portal where you can see your genetic profile - without the insurance company having any access to your data! This means that you can make dietary and lifestyle changes to improve your chances against your genetic predisposition toward obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, etc. while lowering the risk for your insurance company. A win-win situation!

2. Diet model: Your latest cholesterol checkup suggests that you should reconsider your diet. At the dietist's office, your current diet is matched with your genetic predisposition to absorb nutrition. The results show that the diet is not the issue, it is your body that does not handle some of your daily intake very well. Consequently, your dietist recommends you to ask your doctor for drug X to enhance your nutrition absorption.

Personal Genome Project (PGP) - an Open IP Platform

The Human Genome Project provided the first drafts of nearly complete human genome sequences in 2001. This "generic" human genome sequence is now being used to advance medicine, human biology and knowledge of human origins. The available information, however, is not enough to determine individuals' risk profiles for disease. PGP - led by George M. Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School - was launched to create a platform to do just that.

The cost to extract all the information during the human genome project was close to US$ 3 billion, which has decreased all the way down to US$ 1500 per genome by now (although most sequencing companies charge US$ 30-50k to sequence a genome). PGP aims - as its first milestone - to collect genomic information from 100 000 people together with their trait information (i.e. phenotypic data such as diseases). Sample collection is entirely built on samples contributed by volunteers all agreeing on their personal information being open for access to the public, mainly providing two utilities;

Profiles of patients getting their genomes sequenced can compare their genetic profiles to the genotypes of risk profiles
Statistical correlation of the data can provide novel gene-trait associations leading to new drug targets

The platform is open in multiple layers and several IP transactions take place in an open innovation fashion. Core R&D data making up the platform is - as mentioned - donated by volunteers by collecting cells that are then cultured in cell line libraries for future reference pooled together with written trait data collected via a virtual interface. Genomic data is available for download and cell lines are available to order. Analysis of the data is conducted through open source software to ensure that users can help develop the tools in case something seems to be missing. Sequencing technology and tools are inlicensed from commercial sequencing companies. PGP is conducted at nominal cost and most of the financing is raised through donations.

So what about IP ownership? The Material Transfer Agreement states that: " i) the Provider retains ownership and title to the Materials (including any Materials contained in any Modifications) and ii) the Recipient retains ownership and title to the Modifications (except that the Provider retains ownership and title to any Materials contained in any Modifications). The Recipient is free to file patent application(s) claiming inventions made by, or on behalf of, the Recipient through the use of the Materials, but agrees not to file any patent application containing a composition of matter claim on the original Materials or an Unmodified Product.".

To me, the PGP initiative exemplifies an extremely interesting example of an open IP platform with the potential to create value for both society and knowledge based companies leveraging diagnostic tools, drugs and preventative medicine and I may come back to do a deeper analysis in an upcoming blog post.

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

Literary sampling creates German bestseller

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:17:00 +0000

A quite interesting story about plagiarism versus sampling in literature has unveiled itself in Germany over the last few weeks. My German might not be as good as it should but the journalists at the New York Times has helped me (and perhaps you) with the key elements of the story. Helene Hegemann a 17 year old writer and cultural wunderkind has obviously borrowed a bit too much from an earlier published book and forgot to tell anyone about it.

The publication last month of her novel about a 16-year-old exploring Berlin’s drug and club scene after the death of her mother, called “Axolotl Roadkill,” was heralded far and wide in German newspapers and magazines as a tremendous debut, particularly for such a young author. /…/

That is, until a blogger last week uncovered material in the novel taken from the less-well-known novel “Strobo,” by an author writing under the nom de plume Airen. In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes.
From the New York Times.

Sampling and litterature
This could of course have been the end for this otherwise talented and promising German writer. Even though sampling by now more or less has been accepted in music industry, to use material from other writers has previously not been taken lightly.

The quite recent case with the Swedish writer Fredrik Colting using the character Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salingers’ book Catcher in the Rye is an illustrative example of how serious copyright and plagiarism is taken in the publishing business.

Mr. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965, has sued several times to protect his writing, including successful efforts to stop publication of some of his personal letters in a biography and to halt a staging of “Catcher” by a college theater company in San Francisco.
From the New York Times.

The interesting twist to the German story is that the author, Helene Hegemann, seems to come out on top after the initial discussion has settled. But it also raises interesting questions about copying and sources of inspiration as well as attribution; because the lack of attribution to her sources is one of the key discussions afterwards.

“I myself don’t feel it is stealing, because I put all the material into a completely different and unique context and from the outset consistently promoted the fact that none of that is actually by me,” Hegemann told the daily Berliner Morgenpost.
From The Local.

The future
I think we in the future will see more and more of mixing and borrowing inspiration from different sources. Not only because “everything is already written” but also because the technology makes it possible in a totally different way than for instance in the 1980’s.

This might seem as a cliché, but I also believe that it is important that we really think through how we should face this new era of easy access. Technology is developing and that is something we cannot hinder. I am quite convinced that we should not hinder the development either. It is therefore important to be prepared for the changes that are coming, both in our own mindset but also legislatively. I have no solution just yet, but I am quite convinced that we have much more to gain by adapting to the changing society that to try to keep some parts in a pre-computer-era state of mind.

Techdirt writes an interesting piece about the phenomenon and concludes:

In the same way that remixes and mashups often drive people to buy the original music, it seems like remixed/mashedup books can do the same. It may be a big cultural leap for those who think there is "a way things must be done," but it seems that the younger generation has other ideas.

But, and this might be where I eventually will end up personally, the fact that information is readily available and collaboration in the creative space can be both with and without the consent of all involved parties does not mean that it should be without rules to follow.

A first step in this is definitely to fully credit the sources used. Something which Helene Hegemann has had trouble with.

"I think there are good ethical grounds for giving sources for a book - and the fact that I neglected to do so reflects my thoughtlessness and my narcissism," Hegemann said in an interview with Die Welt, adding, "But for me personally, it doesn’t matter at all where people get their material - what matters is what they do with it.”
From Deutsche Welle.

Johan Orneblad
Follow me on Twitter

[Via Svante Weyler in “Godmorgon, Världen!" Sveriges Radio P1.]

Too much ownership creates gridlock

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:53:00 +0000

The Columbia Law School professor Michael Heller is perhaps best known for his book The Gridlock Economy from 2008. A book which popularizes the concept of "tragedy of the anticommons". He summarizes the thesis in a speech at Google 2008 as "When too many people own pieces of the same thing, no one can use it".

Gridlock Economy
His works on the Gridlock Economy comes from the time when he was working for the World Bank on post socialist property in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. The state had little experience in private property and ended up in many cases dividing the property in too small and conflicting pieces for anyone to be able to use it.

He published his experiences in the 1997 article "The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transiton from Marx to Markets". From this came 2008 the book The Gridlock Economy. Heller writes in the abstract to the 1997 article:

"When there are too many owners holding rights of exclusion, the resource is prone to underuse -- a tragedy of the anticommons. Anticommons property may appear whenever new property rights are being defined. For example in Moscow, multiple owners have been endowed initially with competing rights in each storefront, so no owner holds a useable bundle of rights and the store remains empty. Once an anticommons has emerged, collecting rights into private property bundles can be brutal and slow. This article explores the dynamics of anticommons property in transition economies, formalizes the empirical material in a property theory framework, and then shows how the idea of anticommons property can be a useful new tool for understanding a range of property puzzles."

Modern gridlock
To understand the concept of the tragedy of the anticommons one can think of a piece of land divided in to so small pieces that in order for any one person to farm one acre he would need permission from hundreds of property owners. The cost and effort needed to gather all of those property owners and negotiate agreements with each would take more time and cost more than what it would be worth farming the land. In the terms of Heller this would be the opposite of the tragedy of the commons where for instance a pond is fished dry of fish since there is no owner managing the fishing in the pond.

The effects of the gridlock can rarely be seen even though they might be most significant. The New Yorker puts it as that

...the effects of underuse created by too much ownership are often invisible. They’re mainly things that don’t happen: inventions that don’t get made, useful drugs that never get to market.

One of the clearest examples of tragedy of the anticommons today is patent gridlock. The fact that there is in a specific are so many patents that you can not in any meaningful way use the technology without infringing on potentially hundreds or thousands of patents. This could be the way with for instance mobile phones which might be covered by some 5000 patents or new drugs which could have similar patent thickets laid out.

A similar situation is present when it comes to the documentary series "Eyes on the prize" from the late 80s. Heller talks about that the series which portraits the African-American Civil Rights Movement to a large extent is built on archival footage and contemporary songs, met problems when it was to be broadcast again and also released on DVD since it was too costly to track down each rights holder to get permission for the new release. Further on this can be read here.

One way to get around these problems with too fragmented rights can be to pool the rights. This is commonly used for patents, where it for many products would be an impossible task to evaluate each patent and track down it's potential rights holder. Collection societies such as ASCAP and BMI can provide the same function for copyrighted works, for instance music played on the radio.

But as Michael Heller concludes in a Newsweek article we still have a big challenge in the gridlock economy.

A survey sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences found that scientists now routinely respond to gridlock by becoming patent pirates, just like students who illegally download music. Commercial drug developers, of course, cannot risk disregarding competitors' patents. Many of the world's leading drugmakers simply redirect investment toward less challenging areas and innovation quietly slips away. The dearth of new blockbuster drugs should prod Big Pharma off its longstanding position that the existing patent regime must be defended no matter what.

Commons and Anticommons
The ideas of commons and anticommons are not new and Michael Heller does not claim to have come up with the concepts, though he has coined the term "tragedy of the anticommons". It is in this rich idea tradition the newly published anthology "Commons and Anticommons" edited by Heller, takes an in depth approach trying to understand the relation between overuse and underuse of property.

Heller has collected 35 articles over a total of 1,192 pages in two volumes. Contributors ranging from Aristotle and Carl Shapiro to the 2009 Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and Michael Heller himself.

To me, the book's contribution lays in that it collects most of the relevant research on the tragedy of the commons and anticommons in one place and thus challenges the reader to understand the broader picture as well as the specifics of for instance spectrum allocation and the fishing industry.

Johan Orneblad
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Further resources

Audio and video
Authors@Google: Michael Heller on YouTube
Heller on Gridlock and the Tragedy of the Anticommons on Econtalk
Tragedies of the Gridlock Economy, an Economy Information Project conference on the Gridlock Economy hosted by George Mason University School of Law, with a discussion by Michael Heller and Richard Epstein. The conference is discussed here and some of the papers from the book Commons and Anticommons can also be found on the conference website.
Hearsay Culture interview with Michael Heller
Are patents and copyrights making innovation impossible? Out-Law Radio interview with Michael Heller

Books
Gridlock Economy on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Commons and Anticommons on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

TEDxGöteborg

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:24:00 +0000

On Saturday, I was one of 200 selected applicants to attend the first TEDxGöteborg event, which is one of several locally organized TED talk events that the famous TED organization endorses (but does not organize). The event was a well-organized gathering of people from different backgrounds watching a number of live talks by inspiring thought leaders combined with a number of selected talks streamed from the TED website.

This was a full day event, which included the following list of speakers and performances;

Ramnath Narayanswami
Kajsa Sperling
Julian Treasure
Jesper Larsson
Olof Kolte

-- Group discussion --

Remmy Shawa
Aimee Mullins
Magnus Larsson
Karolina Nätterlund

-- Visualization of audio: performance by Sönderbyggd --

-- Group discussion --

Caren Steel
Jacob Lagerqrantz

-- Musical performance: Göteborgs Indiekör

It was an interesting and varied discussion covering subjects such as biomimicry for solving technological challenges, new uses for bacteria, gender-based violence in Africa, creative destruction of industries through disruptive innovation, how to prevent desertification, how the perception has changed on disability, sustainability in transportation and food distribution. I think that the organizers had done an excellent job in creating an innovative atmosphere and the schedule was set with a number of coffee breaks for group discussion and debriefing of the covered topics.

There were several highlights but I want to mention two that were particularly interesting. Jesper Larsson talked about how he had redefined the concept of accommodation when being away from home. He has, together with sponsors and colleagues, started something that he refers to as a creator's-inn. Basically this is a way of providing free accommodation for artists when they perform their creative work away from their home city. Jesper and his crew have, among a number of examples he presented, built hotel rooms that should feel like "home". In these rooms there are clothes in the drawers for those who wishes to use them, music records to listen to, a wallpaper with a city map where visitors can recommend good restaurants to each other using post-its and even an online directory with suggested people to hang out with. These things are all possible through the collaborative effort of a number of altruistic soles that likes helping others. The beauty of this is that creates a "win-win-win-win situation" since the idea benefits creators (staying for free), local creative organizers (can offer guests accommodation), culture of the city (makes the city attractive to go to for creators), creative exchanges (more creators may be able to travel and perform at other places) and sponsors (e.g. IKEA that seemed to have contributed with some of the furniture).

Another highlight of the day was a talk given by Karolina Nätterlund who talked about how knowledge from biology may be used to solve everyday technological problems by imitating nature. Karolina who is a former student from the engineering design program at Chalmers has also started the company Equidesign, where she focuses on bringing in biologists to brainstorming sessions about solving commercial problems. There must be countless interesting features in nature (just think about spider webs or different forms of venoms) that could be used as an interdisciplinary problem solving (Biomimicry) approach to everyday problems.

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

Ford and Geely closer to agree on Volvo IPR

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:36:00 +0000

The talks between the Chinese car manufacturer Geely and Ford seems to have gotten a step closer to actually closing the deal on Volvo Cars. According to a press release on November 27 the key issue about how and in what form the technology is to be part of the transfer has been solved.

For acquired Volvo Cars from the Swedish automotive company Volvo some 10 years ago. Volvo AB still manufactures trucks and heavy vehicles under the same brand name.

Ford has for some time had negotiations with the Chinese car manufacturer Geely about selling Volvo, a deal estimated to be worth some USD 2 billion. Even though the brand itself probably adds up to a great deal of that price the actual technology to build up the cars have been one of the key issues in the negotiations. For one, Volvo has been tightly integrated in to Ford and as such most likely shared technology, and IP, across both companies. This has been an issue in the negotiations, since Chinese companies are not as highly regarded when it comes to respecting IP. The current integration in to Ford has therefore created some issues, now when it is assumed Volvo will operate independently as an own entity.

The press release yesterday stated that a solution might be close at hand.

"Volvo will retain ownership over key technologies and IP that it has developed and will retain access to all Ford IP that Volvo plans to use to implement its business plan," and that by owning Volvo Geely would get "access to a significant suite of IP, including Volvo's safety and environmental IP."According to Reuters.

I think this is interesting for two reasons.

1) The automotive industry is to a large extent driven by innovations and the IP portfolios and teams of engineers are key assets that Chinese companies have had a hard time keeping up with. By acquiring Volvo Geely will get access to many interesting technologies, possibly both to be deployed in vehicles with the Volvo brand but also in other brands.

2) That the IP owned bu Volvo will come with the purchase might not come as a total surprise and will possibly be quite easy to handle in the long run. The issue which to me is a bit less clear is that Volvo will get access to IP for the planned implementation of the business plan. What is included, for how long and to what extent. They will possibly/hopefully define it in a better way in the final contract, though one can not be too sure.

I recollect the now settled dispute between eBay and Joltid around the fundamental technology for Skype. It turned out that it was not included in the purchase of the company. I might not see as fundamental technology retention in this case, but there might be some core IP kept in Ford's control to surface in a couple of years time when the cars not planned in the business plan are a reality. Perhaps impeding Volvo and it's owner in efforts challenging established US companies (read Ford).

Johan Örneblad
Follow me on Twitter.

Access to plant genetic resources in the public domain

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:07:00 +0000

I had an interesting discussion a few days ago with prof. Carl-Gustaf Thornström ( Division of legal affairs, finances and H&R and dept. for Plant Biology and Forest Genetics), executive director of the Sida sponsored programme: Genetic Resources and Intellectual Property Rights (GRIP) and member of the CGIAR Genetic Resources Policy Committee. The discussion was centralized around how intellectual asset management (IAM) in the public sphere differs from IAM in a private- or academic setting, where prof Thornström has close to 30 years of experience in the former. One of the main differences resides in the fact that asset portfolios of plant genetic material are intended to be held and managed in the public sphere as a benefit for society without any dependencies, biases or promoting any self-interests. Beneficiaries in this public domain constitute a multi-stakeholder consortium with actors from everything between private multinational corporations, non-profit organizations to individual farmers in third world countries.

Who's responsibility should it be to maintain these portfolios of gene diversity?

This question easily slips into a philosophical discussion about power positions between state versus private capital. However, my intention is not to go into a political discourse but rather explain why management of these portfolios are in the interest of more stakeholders than just the private sector. Prof Thornström uses Sweden as an illustrative example (in the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences' blog: Forskarbloggen) for the purpose of showing the importance of maintaining plant breeding in a sustainable way. The Swedish state co-financed national plant breeding until the end of the 90's when it left this responsibility with the only Swedish plant breeding company - Weibull-Svalöf. In 2006, due to fiercer international competition the company had to discontinue its breeding of a number important annual crops, e.g. rye, malt barley and potatoes, which severely weakens Swedish agriculture for these crops. This is because of the high environmental dependence (e.g. hours of sun light, soil, weather, temperature, etc.) of each crop that makes a plant variety bred in south of Italy unsuitable for the conditions in Germany, which even applies between varieties bred in the south of Sweden and the mid-north. In the long-term, this could mean that traditionally grown crops such as rye would have to be imported from countries where plant breeding is still being carried out since domestic yields wouldn't be price competitive compared to international equivalents.

How open is this public domain?

Well, it depends on the perspective from which you are approaching this. It may be argued that assets in this domain are fully accessible and that this provides an open platform contingent upon that the accessing party accepts terms and conditions that this material may be attached to. However, contemplate the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), which was adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. The convention provides national sovereignty over genetic resources and access conditions for other sovereign parties. This means that there are different procedures and rules to access material in the many countries that are parties of the CBD. Can genetic material still be thought of as being openly available in a public domain? In 1996 in South America, the Andean Community founded a close to draconian legislation and access conditions for foreign scientists wishing to conduct research on genetic material in this region, which may severely inhibit valuable research. Other countries have bureaucratic procedures that takes more than 5 years from the time of application (compare this to Hernando de Soto's findings of how long some of developing countries' property systems take in the Mystery of Capital) which obviously risks leading to illegal material exchanges that could have dramatic repercussions for universities and others.

Other legislation in the genetic policy landscape to take into account include;

• TRIPS, adopted in Marrakesh in 1994, provides a minimum IP protection standard for biological matter such as plant varieties, microorganisms, and microbiological processes.

• ICGTK was set up in 2001 by WIPO to discuss IP issues relating to access to genetic resources and the protection of traditional knowledge, including disclosure requirements in patent applications.

• UPOV provides legal protection for plant varieties fulfilling the NDUS criteria (new, distinct, uniform, and stable), while including a breeder’s exemption and farmer’s privilege.

• The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, adopted in Rome in 2001, provides a multilateral system of access and benefit sharing under a revised material transfer agreement (MTA) in relation to some 35 defined crops.

• The Global Crop Diversity Trust, set up in 2002, is an attempt by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Bank to establish a trust fund for global ex situ collections of germplasm of relevance for food and agriculture.

• The Cartagena protocol, adopted in Montreal in 2000, provides rules for the transfer of genetically modified living organisms across borders.

• In 2002, the CBD adopted the Bonn Guidelines on Access to Genetic Resources and Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising out of their Utilization. A voluntary supplement to the CBD, the Bonn guidelines offer basic information about the rules on access and concrete procedures (or protocols) to follow.

(The list above - emphasis has been added- is borrowed from CG. Thornström's article Access and Benefit Sharing: Understanding the Rules for Collection and Use of Biological Materials, chapter 16.2 (or p.1462) in the IP Handbook)

Conclusions

As the legislative landscape is growing denser (alongside patent thickets), I think that there will be a need within the agribio sector for open platforms where stakeholders from all spheres can come together and form clearing house mechanisms together to ensure that agricultural biotech innovations/technology and valuable germplasm are available and accessible on a broader level. Not the least for economic development and welfare! One of the key challenges, among many, will be to ensure that this can be achieved at a high enough level since the CBD evidently will require national anchoring. This will take a long time if this is to happen solely from the wills of people in an administrative and governmental arena, and I therefore think that it will be crucial that there will be some sort of push from academic institutions and private entities to speed up this process. During CIP FORUM 2009 we spoke about how research utilization and company output will be increasingly dependent upon effective open & early innovation, and this is a case-in-point where the two come together. The future of genetic access is ours to shape!

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

Monetizing R&D intangibles

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:31:00 +0000

In my job, I work quite a lot together with medical doctors and professors carrying out research projects where some form of commercialization potential has been identified. Often it is my role to come in as a business developer and by an initial intellectual asset due diligence process distinguish which of the R&D building blocks that are truly value creating and how these potential values may be extracted. As a part of this, I get to see quite a number of grant applications and discuss how these can be re-designed for effective communication of a project's value with a basis in their intellectual assets.

Tacit valuation model for early stage research

I think that it is interesting to think that a grant reviewer will (although probably to a large extent tacitly and indirectly) value the underlying potential of research activities and new technologies, and eventually determine whether the sought amount is a feasible investment. Certainly there are parallels with such an implicit valuation model to patent valuation where a challenge is to identify suitable metrics for estimation of the value of a technology.

So what are some of the soft metrics that could determine the value of a technology for a grant reviewer?

Value of scientific excellence

Most grant reviewers probably would like to say that their sharp eye spotted the Nobel Prize candidate long before its nomination and that it was that particular early-stage grant that enabled the discovery. However, in reality scientific brilliance may be difficult to determine. Especially so, if the grant reviewer's expertise happens to be in another area than what the application is describing. One way to "outsource" this determination is to rely on citations in scientific journals. A citation count corresponds to the number of times other research papers reference the results of a publication-of-interest. But it is not self-evident how to value citations solely based on the number. How would you distinguish between?

A higher number of citations due to a rather basic discovery
A low number of citations in highly respected journals
A high number of citations but none within the same research area
A low number of citations

Value of personal brands

Another aspect that is often quoted as high perceived value in the eyes of grant reviewers is to have successful competences associated to a project. Metrics to measure the significance of human capital include;

Curriculum Vitae (e.g. previous positions and experience)
Academic titles
Citations (e.g. H-index, citations per year, total citations)
Publications (e.g. how many, in which journals, co-authors)
Previously raised financing through grants and commercialization

Value of association to other trademarks

Association of research projects with other entities and initiatives can be interpreted as different identities and perceived values for projects. Here are some examples;

Market closeness: Letter of intent from a collaborating company
National/regional importance: Proof of participation in research platform (e.g. IMI, FP7)
Societal value: Grant approval letter from major foundation (e.g. B&M Gates Foundation)

Value of legal clarity and technology transferability

For grant reviewers that are interested in seeing research results being utilized and commercialized, value metrics may include;

Patents (e.g. number of patents, coverage, assignee/inventorship)
Agreements (e.g. consortia agreements - ensuring that rights to results are governed)
Freedom-to-operate evaluations

However, there are also newer metrics in the knowledge economy such as quotes on how many registered unique users one's database has. Other interesting metrics could for example be generated in open innovation projects such as Folding@Home (where a complex biological computation is distributed on 250 thousand CPUs of personal computers) where the project could claim to have access to 25 000 CPUs (assuming 10% usage of each CPU).

Will we see the numbers of "Digg it"-clicks, twitter hits and LinkedIn connections in future grant applications as metrics for societal interest and networks?

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

Intangitopia Picks - Google books

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Intangitopia has previously written about the Google Books project and its effort to digitize all books available. The full scale of the project is probably not seen yet, especially since Google still is in legal dispute around the digitization efforts. To me it seems quite inevitable that they will be able to digitize most books, at some point, the relevant question will then be who can get access to the information and on what terms.

The Economist has interviewed Paul Courant, librarian at University of Michigan, on the subject and the impact for research to have, at least, all orphan books digitized and searchable. One of the points he makes is that the book project gives different universities access to each other's libraries digitally, for the benefit of research. But as he also points out, Google is not doing this only to be nice, but rather to get more eyeballs to browse their webpages and adverts.

&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;What I find especially interesting is to follow how Google actually will monetize this huge library of information.

They have recently given On Demand Books access to their digital library to print books for customers. This posts interesting questions to how other actors in the digital/physical distribution of books should react. Even though the currest deal with On Demand Books only covers orphan book, books without rights holders, it is most likely that it at some point also will cover books with rights holders.

The role of the university - in the Future of Early Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Tobias Thornblad) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:41:00 +0000

Ulf Petrusson opened up the second day of the Early Innovation and Knowledge City/Region track at CIP FORUM, on Tuesday afternoon. The theme of the talk was about how innovation and openness can be safeguarded in research platforms. The full panel included;

Arundeep Pradhan, President, AUTM and Oregon Health Sciences

Boo Edgar, Chairman, MedCoast Scandinavia and Director, GIBBS

Karen Hersey, fm Senior Counsel IP MIT and Professor, Franklin Pierce Law Center

Michael Cleare, Director TTO, University of Pennsylvania

Philippe Cupers, PhD, IMI European Union

Ulf Petrusson, Professor of Law, University of Gothenburg and Director, CIP

IP as discussion topic is often focused on the commercialization aspect on the underlying technologies but this was a discussion focused on the ability to use instruments such as IPRs, policies and technology transfer functions to stimulate research and knowledge dissemination. Universities face major challenges as increasing complexities of new technologies demands more extensive developments before research results can be readily utilized and provide societal benefits. In order for universities to not being risked to be blocked further down the line of the collaboration, there is an increasing need for intellectual asset management capabilities (e.g. for managing research processes, research collaborations, contract research, research funding, development processes, project selection, etc.).

A model was also presented where the role of the university was tracked over time from being a pure educational platform based on solely contributing to the public domain. Over time, this has also started to incorporate an increasing licensing and collaboration model where its responsibility has also started to include supporting the industry and society by transferring its research. As the importance of providing societal value has increased the university has also engaged in more entrepreneurial activity through a venture creation model. As all of the functions above have been incorporated, a new role for the university has emerged - the Intellectual Asset (IA) platform university.

Tobias Thornblad

(Contact via Twitter)

Third day at CIP Forum 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Johan Örneblad) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:11:00 +0000

The third day of the CIP Forum 2009 in Gothenburg, Sweden, has got halfway through the morning session and Ruud Peters of CEO of Philips intellectual Property and Standards has just finished his keynote speech on "Communicating value - Putting IP in the boardroom once and for all".

Ruud Peters.

The audience.

Peters talked about the challenges in how to put IP in to the boardroom and some of the advises he gave were: "Create IP Solutions and not only IP Problems", "Create a customer focused IP organization", "Responsiveness IP organization needs to match the dynamics in the business", "Run your IP organization as a business in itself".

But from his point of view, the most important point advice is to create a workforce that has a mix of three important knowledge insights;

basic IP knowledge
market/business insights
economic/financial knowledge.

"CIP is doing a great job through their educational programs in meeting those needs."

Now on stage "The Jedi Counsel of IP" as introduced by Ralph Eckardt. The talk is about "Why industry needs IP but fails to realize it".

The panel, Consisting of Ruud Peters (CEO, Philips Intellectual Property and Standards), Béatrix de Russe (Executive Vice President, Thomson), Ian Hardvey (Chairman, Intellectual property Institute), Kasim Alfalahi (Vice President, Ericsson), Mark Blaxill (Managing Director, 3LP Advisors) and standing, Ralph Eckardt (Managing Director, 3LP Advisors).

Johan Örneblad
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