Posts Tagged: "research and development"

IP-skeptics charge that these inventions are little more than a way for pharmaceutical companies to cynically prolong patent life and maximize profits, without providing any meaningful innovation. This rather simplistic view misunderstands how the patent system works, and the role of patents in incentivizing drug discovery and development. In reality, many of today’s most significant medicines owe their existence to the ability of medical innovators to secure patents for novel new forms and new uses of existing treatments.

Given the complexity of many technologies, the rapidly changing nature of global markets, and the legal complexities in establishing worldwide licensing programs, it should come as no surprise that IP licensing offers benefits. When this work succeeds, everyone benefits – from innovators and IP owners to the general population as companies around the world gain greater access to new and improved technologies. To avoid missing out on the tremendous rewards and benefits of innovation, we must take full advantage of R&D’s potential in the complex and fast-paced markets of today that offer up opportunities to aggregate and license technologies in new sectors, geographical areas and markets.

Universities in particular must explain to their congressional delegations why R&D must continue to be funded and why its Bayh-Dole based commercialization bridge must be protected so federal funds already in the pipeline can produce the future jobs, growth and beneficial scientific progress they expected when they voted formerly to support R&D… Unless universities actively justify their commercialization of federally-funded R&D, other influential interests on the Hill who care little about future scientific study, but care a lot about their own survival, will now perceive R&D’s annual funding as a bridge to their own survival. This is no time to wait and watch from the sidelines.

The recent earnings release from Intel also indicates that the company is increasing its investment in research and development. Intel reported that R&D expenditures were $12.7 billion over the course of 2016 and $3.3 billion during the fourth quarter. This was up from the company’s $12.1 billion investment in R&D during 2015 as well as $3.1 billion invested during 2015’s fourth quarter. Intel spent more on R&D than it did on marketing, general and administrative (MG&A), where the company spent $8.4 billion during 2016 and $2.2 billion during the recent quarter. Intel’s full year guidance for 2017 indicates that the company expects to spend a total of $20.5 billion on both R&D and MG&A this year.

In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States. Hurricane Andrew bore down on the American Southeast, causing billions in damage after wreaking destruction from Florida to Louisiana. Johnny Carson retired from The Tonight Show. The Buffalo Bills were in the Super Bowl. Los Angeles saw a string of deadly riots related to the LAPD’s televised beating of Rodney King. And 1992 was the last year during which a company other than American information technology firm IBM (NYSE:IBM) could claim that it had earned the greatest number of U.S. patents… With over 8,000 patents IBM stands supreme in the US patent world, earning the most US patents in 2016 and claiming the top spot for the 24th year in a row.

Bayh-Dole is running on autopilot without Executive branch oversight and U.S. patents are no longer the world’s gold standard. Without a course correction, we could be headed back to the bad old days… Bayh-Dole has become a driver of the U.S. economy. Every day of the year universities form two new companies and two new products from their inventions are commercialized. University spin out companies tend to stay in state becoming significant contributors to the regional economy… Bayh-Dole is a recognized best practice. The Chinese have adopted it while strengthening their patent system to better compete with us.

A recent Canadian survey (CRA Survey) has conclusively attributed lowered levels of R&D investment in Canada’s innovation ecosystem to the country’s unique judicial “Promise Doctrine.” The Promise Doctrine is a controversial patent elimination dynamic, judicially imposed during patent enforcement proceedings, often after a patented product has achieved its developmental endpoint, having successfully completed its long and costly commercialization. By its unpredictable applicability, like an unseen open manhole, Canada’s promise doctrine can cancel the benefits of a long journey at its market-ready endpoint… As the Survey suggests, long-lasting damage to Canada’s innovation ecosystem may already have occurred, which is why the Survey bears so heavily on the U.S. patent system’s own endpoint “open manhole”, Inter partes review (IPR). However Canada deals with its promise doctrine woes, we too have much to learn from this Canadian Survey.

Delayed for months beyond its expected issue date the Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicine’s report emerged yesterday. Apparently the panelists scrambled to better disguise their predetermined agenda behind reams of soothing rhetoric. While lip service is given to the unimagined advances in medicine under the current industry led drug development system, that’s quickly discarded under the pretext of providing better access to health care for the world’s poorest citizens through a system run by international bureaucracy. These recommendations are largely directed at the US life science industry. Luckily, one panel member provides an effective rebuttal to this approach but unless his message is repeated many public officials, media outlets and the general public could come to accept that a government run system would be “more fair.”

To hear Ars Technica say it is ”a terrible idea” to devote increased funding in order to eradicate cancer is astonishing on many levels. As part of the reason why he believes increased funding for cancer research is a terrible idea he explains that great strides have been made with respect to treatments and cures, which is true. Of course, it is also true that people are dying and they are dying horrible deaths. With the victories and advances that have been made over the last generation it is no longer fanciful to dream of a day when cancer can become eradicated. So why is it a terrible idea to devote more resources on a so-called cancer moonshot to attempt to once and for all put an end to this scourge? For anyone to call President Obama’s cancer moonshot a terrible idea is nothing short of cruel, and is frankly incredibly stupid.

While the startup probably had an initial 100% market share due to a temporary de facto monopoly, such share rapidly decreases as soon as others start selling to the same customers. Worse, many times, one of those fast followers is a large entrenched company that has deep R&D teams, seemingly unlimited budgets, well-known brands and established distribution channels in many key geographies that took decades to build. They can play catchup really fast. In other words, the only thing going for the startup at that point (assuming it could not possibly achieve this scaling up over such a short period of time) is the uniqueness of its technology and its ability to out innovate others. This in turn is only true if the new technology it brings to market is adequately protected against free riders; otherwise one is simply doing others’ bidding and subsidizing their R&D… In short, innovation without protection is simply a form of philanthropy!

Ashley Keller: ”I am mildly bullish, because we’re coming from such a low point that it is likely to improve from here. We just talked about the Supreme Court and the willfulness case. I also think that Europe’s unitary patent system is going to be an eye-opener, because it has the potential to be better than our system’s status quo. Competition is a healthy force, and the new system will drive innovation over there. People are going to pay attention to that, and as a consequence, it may improve things over here.”

Only someone who is completely indifferent to the truth, and who has intentionally put on blinders so they don’t see the truth, could ever say that the public does not benefit from federally funded research. It is sad that this even needs to be pointed out, but critics of the patent system and federal research funding can take intellectual dishonesty to bizarre heights. In other words, they are not beyond making outright false statements, which all too frequently go unchecked. Equally ridiculous is the argument that the federal government built every technology that is the result of some funded scientific breakthrough. The fact that the government invested in basic science doesn’t mean that all follow-on innovation that utilizes the discoveries was built and paid for by the government. Such an argument is completely disingenuous.

Drugs for the treatment of late-stage cancers are less expensive to develop, in part because late-stage drugs extend patients’ lives for a shorter period of time such that clinical trials are concluded more quickly. This means that such drugs require less time to research, develop, test and bring to market than drugs that treat earlier stage cancers, providing the innovator with a longer effective patent life. In essence, less research and development investment is directed toward drugs that treat patient groups requiring lengthy clinical trials, those with longer commercialization lags… It’s worthwhile to ask whether a ‘one-size-fits-all’ patent policy is optimal. How we can think creatively about patent protection in an effort to incentivize the innovation we want and push the frontiers of modern medicine.

Earlier today U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) introduced legislation to encourage and increase the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science within the federal government. The purpose of the legislation is to advance and accelerate scientific research, literacy, and diplomacy. There are not a lot of specifics in the bill, but the bill would authorize the head of each Federal agency to “utilize crowdsourcing and citizen science approaches to conduct activities designed to advance the mission of the respective Federal agency or the joint mission of Federal agencies, as applicable.”

While Chinese President Xi is cracking down on political dissidents and solidifying his power over the army, the country has begun a huge push for innovation. While it’s easy for us to look askance at that proposition, we may be about to launch an equally quixotic experiment of our own: seeing if American innovation can survive the undermining of our patent system.