Posts Tagged: "research and development"

The Bayh-Dole Act was passed because Congress was rightly concerned that potential benefits from billions of dollars of federally funded research were lying dormant on the shelves of government. Government funded inventions tend to be very early stage discoveries—more like ideas than products—requiring considerable private sector risk and investment to turn them into products that can be used by the public. Under prior patent polices government agencies took such inventions away from their creators and offered them non-exclusively for development. There were no incentives for the inventors to remain engaged in product development. Not surprisingly, few such inventions were ever commercialized even though billions of dollars were being spent annually on government R&D.

There’s nothing in the world like the U.S. public research system which is on the cutting edge of every field of science. However, to fully benefit from this investment discoveries must move from the laboratory into the marketplace. This can only happen when partnerships with U.S. industry are be made on terms conducive to commercialization. Additionally, in a time of tight budgets federal research must be efficiently managed even if that means crossing traditional agency borders to leverage resources and increase impact. Someone must be charged with insuring that the system is running as Congress, the President, and most importantly, the American people intend.

I think these results show that the disclosure function of patents is working to at least some extent, at least in nanotech: patents can be a useful source of technical information, and willful infringement concerns are not preventing most nanotech researchers from looking at patents. But there are still problems with patent disclosure: the result that only 38% of patent readers think those patents are reproducible raises questions about whether disclosure ought to be improved just to meet current legal requirements.

The report ignores actual practice. Universities rarely have multiple companies fighting to license their inventions. They’re lucky to find one. The rule of thumb is that a promising university technology requires 5-7 years of private sector development to turn into a product. For a drug, double the time and add a billion dollars in costs. Exclusive licenses are often essential to justify such risks.

Several public interest groups recently filed a march in petition under the Bayh-Dole Act asking NIH to force Abbott Laboratories to license its competitors for the production of Ritonavir, a drug used to treat AIDS.  Drug developers face a daunting task. For every 5,000 drugs tested, about five proceed to clinical trials. Perhaps one is eventually approved.  That one must not only pay for itself, but for all the company’s other drugs that died along the way. This grim math eludes the petitioners.

Right now the best business to be in at the moment is the patent enforcement business, at least if you are concerning yourself with low-risk monetization with high reward. Between the legacy issue of bad patents, patent auctions and the many who purchase patents, what has started to happen is that the patent system rewards those who have the finances and ability to game the system. But the problem is extraordinarily complex.

NASA has selected 10 university-led proposals for study of innovative, early-stage space technologies designed to improve shielding from space radiation, spacecraft thermal management and optical systems. The 1-year grants are worth approximately $250,000 each, with an additional year of research possible. Each of these technology areas requires dramatic improvements over existing capabilities for future science and human exploration missions. Early stage, or low technology readiness level concepts, could mature into tools that solve the difficult challenges facing future NASA missions.

Innovation and how to foster next generation technologies is a topic of very active discussion within businesses across the country. But how can America continue to be one of the most innovative countries in the world? The rapid adoption of IP management and licensing platforms built around social collaboration seems to lead us to one answer – open innovation. Indeed, with today’s technology allowing for the seamless transfer of information – R&D departments have little to no choice but to begin to embrace the open innovation model and use it to their advantage. Understanding your intellectual assets and being able to capitalize on them in order to generate more revenue must be an important part of managing IP and fostering innovation.

Breakthroughs in science and engineering create foundations for new industries, new companies, and new jobs. This is undeniably true. The question is how do we unleash this engine of growth? I am in favor of streamlining the technology transfer process, but I believe that it needs to begin from within. Universities have to revise the view of their appropriate role. Universities are not supposed to be in the business of technology transfer to make money, but rather to facilitate the development of exciting new innovations while training the next generation of engineers and scientists. By developing exciting new innovations and then placing them into the private sector the University plays a vital role in the innovation economy. Under-funding and over-working technology transfer departments is counter-productive.

Many people assume that there’s no way American manufacturers can compete with cheap Chinese labor. It’s just basic economics, right? Wrong. It’s the U.S. government’s myopic policy, not China’s lower payroll costs, that make our nation uncompetitive in the all-important solar and other high-tech manufacturing sectors. With manufacturing friendly tax policies and a permanent 20 percent R&D tax credit equal to what other nations offer China’s advantage drops to 1 to 2 percent, and that the U.S. can compete with.