Archive by category | IP/ Tech Transfer

Linking the scientific and patent literatures

Linking the scientific and patent literatures

The scientific literature and patent literature have for a long time been viewed as two different worlds, with publications in the latter one measure of a researcher’s translational activity. But a much larger cadre of researchers influence inventions beyond those who are named as inventors on patents. Within patent filings there is often an extensive list of citations to the non-patent literature, including peer-reviewed papers, monographs, meetings and more. In a Patent article, Jefferson Osmat and her colleagues have created a tool to mine an open database termed the Lens containing filings from the US Patent and Trademark Office, The European Patent Office, the World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty applications and IP Australia for the non-patent literature. This enables an assessment of individual and institutional contributions to the global patent literature.  Read more

The Gene Editing Bazaar

The Gene Editing Bazaar

On February 15, 2017, the US patent authorities ended a legal battle over IP rights between University of California at Berkeley and the Boston-based Broad Institute. According to the long awaited decision, Broad keeps its patents allowing them to own the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technologies in any eukaryotic organisms (including yeast, plants, animals and humans), while Berkeley’s broader patent application, which allows general use of CRISPR-Cas9 in any type of cell (including bacteria), will proceed before the USPTO. Gene editing – the precise and relatively easy deletion, insertion or modification of particular DNA sequences in the genome – is one of the latest innovations aiming to convert genetic engineering into a real engineering discipline. In the past, precise modifications were hard or almost impossible to achieve, frequently leaving genetic marks and requiring rather expensive and time-consuming processes.  Read more

Doing the Patent Dance Without Knowing the Steps

Doing the Patent Dance Without Knowing the Steps

The first day of BIO 2016’s Intellectual Property track featured three sessions that eventually dovetailed into what’s increasingly becoming a thorn in the side of drugmakers: the challenging of drug and biologics patents on multiple fronts and, in theory, without end. In addition to regular patent litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) formed in late 2012 as part of the America Invents Act gave rise to inter-partes reviews (IPRs) seeking to invalidate patent claims and entire patents. In just over three years, the number of IPRs have increased to the point that the process has come to be seen as a road block for patents.  Read more

A role reversal in biotech patenting

A role reversal in biotech patenting

The difference in the patenting landscape between the United States and Europe used to be characterized as freewheeling versus cautionary; expansive versus patchwork. Think of Diamond v. Chakrabarty‘s “anything under the sun that is made by man” versus the long battle to finally allow the patenting of stem cells in Europe.  Read more

University Life Science Patent Transactions

University Life Science Patent Transactions

We asked Relecura, which has a web-based IP analytics platform for analyzing and commercializing patents and patent portfolios, to examine patent information on life sciences in 2013, using keywords and patent classification codes. The result: Relecura found 265 life science patent transactions from universities to corporate entities.* Click on the LS data2 link below to see Relecura’s list of the universities most active at assigning patents to corporate entities (Table 1), and the corporations that acquired the most life science patents (Table 2). Relecura also broke out the results by country (Fig. 1)  … Read more

A Canadian (un)Curriculum

A Canadian (un)Curriculum

Canada is known for its hockey, maple syrup, the beaver, Canadian goose and apologetic nature (sorry). But our list of accomplishments doesn’t end there. Canadians are also tenacious innovators in the fields of biomedical science and biotechnology. Trailblazing Nobel Prize winners like Michael Smith (Site Directed Mutagenesis) and Sir Banting and Best (insulin) paved the way for our current luminaries like Tak Mak (T-cell receptor), Eric Brown and Gerry Wright (antibiotic discovery). These avant-gardists have two characteristics in common: creativity and acumen.  Read more

The E is silent

The E is silent

I’ve already mentioned Wake Forest and tech transfer, but the picture above was shot on the University of South Dakota campus here in the US. The university, which has the state’s only medical school and an overall enrollment of more than 10,000, is located in Vermillion, SD. The official mascot is a coyote — though pronounciation of the word in South Dakota drops the long “E” at the end, so it rhymes with “oat.” This is common in western parts of the US, and thus, when rooting on the local team in The Dakota Dome, the correct phrase is “Go Yotes.”  … Read more

Changes in University Tech Transfer

Changes in University Tech Transfer

The December issue of Nature Biotechnology will include a BioE feature article investigating changes in university tech transfer in the US. We started thinking about this topic early in 2014 and spent about six months reporting on it, before taking all that information and trying to mold it into publishable form. The result is that we have more than we were able to fit into the article, and I wanted to pass along some tidbits on Trade Secrets.  Read more

Blind Technology Transfer: our challenge from the South

Blind Technology Transfer: our challenge from the South

The last years have been characterized by an accelerated transforming process of the cultural, economic, political and social dimensions of society. Consequently, new trends have emerged — especially those developed by large and medium size companies — which support a business strategy oriented toward innovation through partnership with external research groups (coming from the scientific and technological system) under a new conceptual framework: the open innovation. This approach has particular relevance in some disciplinary fields such as biotechnology, in which boundaries between basic science and technology have blurred, causing an intense interaction between companies and the university research system.  Read more

Quilmes National University and Tech Transfer

Quilmes National University and Tech Transfer

The Quilmes National University (UNQ) was founded in 1989, 17km south of Buenos Aires City. One of its first courses was a degree in biotechnology, and the university had an early attitude of being willing to entertain several uncoordinated entrepreneurial initiatives coming from both students and faculty. This attitude extended to technology transfer and applied research.  Read more