Yvette
Crachi

Business Manager

Fire swinging on Koh Tao, Thailand

I love this photo as it brings back special memories of the wonderful culture and people I encountered whilst honeymooning in Thailand.

photo credit: zoutedrop

What if patents lasted 70 years?

by Duncan Bucknell

For those who didn't just run screaming from the room, let's briefly discuss.

What would happen if patents were like copyright and lasted for 70 years? Here are some examples:

Intellectual Ventures and other invention capital firms would be pretty happy, but the pirate party would not.
More effort would go into inventing-around patent claims.
More effort would go into invalidating patents at an earlier stage.
The lawyers and patent attorneys would love all of that. Perhaps better, lower cost mechanisms for determining validity and infringement would be brought to deal with the increased contention.
It would reinforce the differences between high quality and high value patents (which can't be invalidated) which now last for much longer, and the low quality patents which are born with targets on their heads due the longevity of patents.

What would you add?

[Photo credit: Mark Strozier]

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 — IP ON THE NET, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, IP WARS, PHARMA, BIOTECH & CHEM IP STRATEGY, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

Invention capital Intellectual Ventures and You

by Duncan Bucknell

I really enjoyed Nathan Myhrvold's recent piece in the Harvard Business Review (and reported in the New York Times). Delighted to see him explaining further what Intellectual Ventures is up to. Here are some things that struck me as I read through it. Let me know what you think.

It's a good point that the business of invention would function better if it were separated from manufacturing and developed on its own. And this has been happening for quite some time in pockets, though usually constrained, as Nathan points out. A strong capital market that funds and monetizes inventions is definitely a good option for this, but its not the only one. For example, just looking at the other end of things for a minute, there is still a lot of work to be done in reducing the costs and risks associated with commercialising inventions on the single patent by patent scale (and by the way the quoted 1% success rate is probably optimistic). Nathan's model is all about reducing risk with large scale. That's great. It's not the only way. Another way (and there will be others) is to be clever about reducing risks at the invention (or much smaller portfolio) level.

It was a bit of a shame to see Nathan's piece so heavily oriented to the United States and one might suggest a little condescending when dealing with developing countries. He's clearly not only thinking about the US in IV's business strategy, however.

A little too trite on connecting market capitalization of entities like Qualcomm to their patent portfolios but probably just that he was limited on space for the piece.

Is culture the main barrier to the emergence of a bona fide market for inventions? Well I'm not so sure, but thanks for your thoughts. The two cultural shifts Intellectual Ventures is looking for are: (1) product companies to see inventors as wellsprings of innovation and (2) IP rights to be respected, especially in developing economies.

This is a great quote from the world's biggest patent aggregator: "we have never sued anybody to defend our intellectual property rights....It's expensive, it's unpredictable, and it takes years."

I totally agree with the next statement and some thoughts on it will come out in a couple of interviews I haverecently done for leading IP magazines (I'll keep you posted): "I believe the market will start functioning well and will then grow rapidly...We will see a more intricate and efficient invention industry populated by professional patent finders and packagers, appraisers and underwriters, financiers and sales agents - and other roles not yet conceived."

I can see how the Intellectual Ventures model suggests that an efficient market which extracts the full value from patents requires enormous capitalization. I'm personally not so sure that this is the only way, though. I am not aware of anyone who has seriously thought about attacking the cost side of things in a strategic way (please do disabuse me).

There's a fair bit of marketing in the Intellectual Ventures manifesto, by the way.

Intellectual Ventures' current approaches to turning inventions into money:

Package patents together to increase combined value.
Launch a start up (or other special purpose vehicle).
Create patent backed securities.

Nothing earth shattering there. Which is fine.

So here's an opportunity - go dig deep in at the other end of things. For example, develop a process for reducing risk (of market failure) as you invent. It's not really our core business, but I've previously built one process that's been singing along and evolving for a few years. But there will be lots of others.

If Chris Anderson is right about the new economics of the long tail of niches. Then perhaps instead of a few behemoths as Nathan suggests, what the world really needs (in addition) is a whole lot of much smaller, niche entities creating and adding value to invention markets.

What do you think?

[Photo credit: Ric e Ette]

Thursday, February 25, 2010 — PHARMA, BIOTECH & CHEM IP STRATEGY

Pharmaceutical patent settlements - and what about patients?

by Duncan Bucknell

Do patent settlements help or hurt patients? What do you think?

There's an interesting post over in the Pharmaceutical IP forum in LinkedIn. It's reproduced below with permission from Leighton Howard, the author. Let me know what you think, or better still join the forum (it's open to anyone) and get involved in the discussion there.

"Putting aside the benefits to either the innovator or generic company in settling pharma patent cases and the gripes of the FTC and other competition bodies that these settlements feel unfair (but there is nothing it can do to stop them) - shouldn't this question be all about benefit for the patient and/or the health services that often foot the bill for the patient's treatment?

The recent proposal by the Obama administration, as well as more recent investigations and action by the EU competition watchdog seem to approach settlements as being negative, but isn't that throwing the baby out with the bath water?

Sure, any patent settlement that 'delays' entry of a generic will not benefit the patient because the higher cost 'brand' product has the monopoly for longer. However, often the timing of launch of a generic for a 'settled' case is just before expiry of the patent being challenged. This is later than if the generic patent challenge were successful (a delay), but earlier than if the generic challenge were unsuccessful (an acceleration).

So the real question here, is how do you know if a delay to generic launch has occurred until the case has been heard and the outcome of the validity, enforceability or infringement of the patent(s) in question is known with certainty?

I can understand that a settlement which 'delays' the worst generic launch case scenario (i.e. after expiry of the patent in question) is not in the interests of the patient, but this is also generally not in the interests of the innovator or the generic company as they would technically be delaying beyond the 'free for all' generic launch date, assuming no generic exclusivity is applicable.

Shouldn't the legislators concentrate on closing loopholes that are used to delay generic entry rather than denying the established right of any party involved in legal proceedings to reach an agreement with the other party on terms that make sense to all parties?

I'd love to hear comments & further discussion around this topic."

Leighton Howard
CEO GenericsWeb
www.genericsweb.com

[Photo credit: Destinys Agent]

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 — IP ON THE NET, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

You won't get what you want if you look in the wrong place

by Duncan Bucknell

Maybe a call for a Chief [insert whatever you like] Officer is the plaintive cry of a forgotten discipline?

We've seen tons of talk in the IP Blogosphere about Chief IP Officers (CIPOs) (or Chief Aardvark Officers as Marshall Phelps quipped).

My suggestion, and I've said it before: Stop thinking you're unique or different and start listening and learning from the broader business community.

Here are some annotated excerpts from a recent post from the team at Branding Strategy Insider calling for a Chief Marketing Officer. (And thanks guys for a great post, by the way.)

"Given the tremendous marketing potential offered by the new media and proliferation of distribution channels, companies have begun to realize the huge potential of marketing in guiding corporate level strategies and substantially contributing to the financial bottom line."

Sounds just like the call to arms for Chief IP Officers to me.

"Further, not many companies have a senior marketing representative in their C-suite."

Same for IP.

"Why do companies need a Chief Marketing Officer?

As the business landscape evolves, marketing also evolves into an organization wide strategic discipline. Given marketer’s knowledge of the customers, it is imperative that the CEO and the corporate board have a representative of the customer to continually educate them."

Yep, the IP community think the same thing about IP.

"Additionally, companies need a strategic CMO to benefit from:

Align marketing with the corporate business strategy:"

I'd love a dollar for every firm hawking IP services banging on about 'aligning IP strategy with business strategy' without knowing so very much about either.

"Connect the corporate boardroom with the customer:"

Delete customer and insert 'technology', 'innovation' or some other buzzword and you have the CIPO rhetoric to a T.

"Create a customer centric organization:"

Another dollar please for everytime I've seen 'IP-centric business / organization / culture'

"Challenges faced by the CMO

It has been long argued that one of the fundamental challenges of marketing that has undermined the credibility of marketing, threatened the standing of marketing within a company, and even threatened the existence of the very discipline as a distinct entity is marketing’s failure to quantify its outcomes and justify investments into marketing activities."

This is stunningly similar to IP's biggest problem, often blogged and talked about at conferences - demonstrating value. But isn't that a universal issue?

"The three main impediments in this regard are: (1) Relating marketing activities to long-term effects; (2) Separation of individual marketing activities from other actions and (3) Use of purely financial methods for justifying and benchmarking marketing investments. As such, CMOs are not given the opportunity to participate in the strategic decision making of the company."

I love number 3. Number 3 is IP's current achilles heel - purely financialy models and balance sheets don't work for IP either.

"Two such daunting challenges are:

Measuring marketing outcomes:"

Ditto

"Explaining marketing’s centrality in a company:"

Ditto and maybe it's not always so central, guys.

"Internal training:"

Now there's an idea...

"On the horizon

In the future, the CMO will emerge as the strategic connection between the corporate boardroom, the top management team, the CEO and the customer. Companies should offer the CMO the requisite status and power within the company. Furthermore, companies must create an organizational structure where CMOs can guide the company’s vision and mission by integrating the myriad functions within the company. The time is not too far when the success of the company depends on the strength of its marketing and the CMO."

Except the IP community bangs its fist and says the time is now, or yesterday.

[Photo credit: xynt4x]

Thursday, February 18, 2010 — STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, IP WARS, PHARMA, BIOTECH & CHEM IP STRATEGY, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

Scratch that assumption - industrial applicability really does have teeth

by Duncan Bucknell

For those dealing with patents, here's something to study closely.

A patent for a Neutrokine-alpha protein invalidated for lack of Industrial Applicability.

Far reaching implications to say the least. The number of times that I've heard patent attorneys discount this ground is astounding.

Check out Lee Caffin's article on the case in our articles section - 'Satisfying the requirements for Industrial Applicability'

[Photo - Lord Justice Jacob (Sir Robin Jacob), of course.]