Biotech Hopping at Wall Street and Biotech Patenting on an Upswing--More Patenting to Come?

The Wall Street Journal reports that there have been 16 biotech IPOs (it is unclear what is defined as biotech) since the beginning of this year raising over $1.1 billion.  (for more on venture capital backed IPOs generally see here)  To put that in context, in 2004 there were 25 IPOs bringing in close to $1.17 billion.  In the last ten years, at this point, this year would be tied for the second best year and the future looks bright for more biotech IPOs.  The Wall Street Journal also speculates that the rise in IPOs along with their general success is attributable to R&D and clinical trial successes.  For example, the article states that: “Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved 39 new drugs, according to the agency, a figure not reached since 1997. This year, the agency has approved 13 new drugs.”  With the supposed dried up pipeline of Big Pharma, this is welcome news.  Also, the surge in IPOs with more funding may mean more money for patenting efforts in the biotech space with more investors looking to biotech.

On the patenting side, Nature Biotechnology’s Bioentreprenuer reports on statistics on biotech patenting provided by IP Checkups.  It is also unclear what is defined as “biotech,” but the numbers are interesting.  There is a general upswing in biotech patents granted since 2008 from 657 to 850 in 2012 in the United States.  Interestingly, the article also notes the average number of biotech patents by university.  (it is unclear whether these numbers are for granted patents or for patent applications—or full applications or provisional--but it is more likely applications or some of the other numbers don't add up).  If you add up the average number of patents per year between 2008 and 2012 for U.S. universities listed (not all U.S. universities apparently), you get around 880 patents in the United States per year.  The article also has the numbers for patenting at the EPO.  The patenting in the United States is quite a bit higher than the patenting at the EPO.  This could be, in part, because of cost.  Any opinions on the data?   

A New Kind of University? Merging Industry and Academia (with help from the Government) from the Ground Up (almost).

The NY Times recently discussed the admission of the first class of graduate engineering students in computer science at Cornell NYC Tech.  Cornell NYC Tech is an ambitious graduate school designed to foster entrepreneurship through innovative curriculum and a close—even intertwined—relationship with industry from the get go.  Here’s a description of its academic structure: "Research at Cornell Tech is organized around flexible and dynamic interdisciplinary application hubs instead of traditional academic departments. This model serves as a focal point for the campus, accelerating existing sectors of New York City’s economy and driving the formation of new technology businesses through close ties to customers and unique domain knowledge. The first three hubs – Connective Media, Healthier Life and Built Environment – reflect the frontier of the information economy today and where it’s going."

Physically, classes will be located amongst innovative companies.  And, employees of the companies will work hand-in-hand with students and faculty.  Fridays are apparently devoted to lectures by people from outside academia.  Students have industry advisors for their master’s project—someone from a company, from a nonprofit or who is an early stage investor.  Professors are strongly encouraged to devote time working for industry.  You may be thinking: what about all of the intellectual property disputes that are bound to happen?  Don’t worry—they’ve thought of that as well: “[I]nstead of protracted legal battles with the university over intellectual property rights to those projects, the companies that oversee them will get a contract designed to facilitate frictionless collaboration.”  And, government, industry and academia have “skin in the game” so to speak.  First, Cornell (Cornell’s academic partner is Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology) has set aside $150 million to invest in New York’s technology sector.  Second, the City has awarded $100 million and $300 million in real estate to the new school.  Third, Google has donated space at its $2 billion headquarters in NYC for the first class until the permanent campus is completed.   Other companies and nonprofits have signed on to participate as well.  To top this off, the United States Patent and Trademark office will have an onsite representative—an innovation and outreach coordinator—to help with any intellectual property issues and federal government aid. 

What does this all mean for the “traditional” university?  Will private funding for research gravitate toward this particular type of “new” school?  What about government funding?  Is this school really that different from what is already happening?  Is basic research a thing of the past?  Academic freedom, anyone? 

Times are Tough for Universities: What is the Future of University Online Education and IP

The University of California (UC) system has invested millions of dollars in marketing the offering of some of its courses online.  The courses are not only offered to current UC students, but also are offered to non-UC students.  The courses are not offered to non-UC students for free and the hope, in a relatively difficult financial time for most universities, is that the lure of UC classes will lead to extra revenue for the UC system.  Unfortunately, after spending 4 million dollars on marketing, only one student signed up for an online course who is not a current UC student.  That’s right—one student.  The San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee both discuss the issue.  Is the future a grim one for online education--at least at most universities? 

Again, times are tough for universities and looking for outside revenue by offering courses to people who aren’t current students for a fee is one way to make money.   So, don’t expect universities to stop trying and they probably shouldn’t because making education available for more is not such a bad thing.  There is a question of how aggressive university administrators (or others) are going to get in pursuing online education—and IP has a part to play.  Generally speaking, in the United States, professors will own the copyright in their teaching materials or other published materials, usually so-called traditional scholarly works—because of university policy (but, see below).  They also likely won’t have an obligation to share royalties with the university.  However, with the advent of online education, administrators may decide they want the university to own the copyright in any materials created for use in the online course (and that course may be subsequently offered in the future without that professor but using that professor’s materials).  The administrator may also start scratching his or her head and wondering well, why don’t we just own any textbooks or other books produced by the academic--well, we should!  Yikes!  That would be a very unpopular decision for an administrator to make—at least with faculty.  What do you think?  Should faculty own the copyright in their course materials and other published materials, including traditional scholarly works?  What about academic freedom?  Should faculty own all of the materials they created for online courses?  For an excellent discussion of copyright ownership and online education, see Professor Roberta Kwall’s article. 

In a 2006 study concerning university policies and copyright ownership in the United States, the authors of the study found:

[M]ost Universities are writing intellectual property rights policies to delineate the rights of faculty to their works.  Although 93% of these policies designated that professors should have control of their traditional scholarly works; 71% of these universities specifically listed exemptions to this policy. Most universities (95%) claimed some faculty works, especially if the works required substantial use of university resources (83%). On a positive note when the university did claim rights to the intellectual property of a faculty member, 95% offer to share a percentage of the royalties.

Our research also revealed some areas of concern. Although half of the universities gave control of syllabi, tests and notes to faculty, only 31% of these institutions also included materials posted to the web and 36% of the universities claimed ownership of courseware and distance learning materials. A substantial majority of universities claim the intellectual property rights for materials that faculty are given specific assignments to produce (76%), are specifically hired to produce (76%), or are commissioned to produce (67%). Another area of concern is the increase in the number of universities that make some claims in their policies to works developed within the scope of employment or according to the Copyright Law for works-for-hire or (currently 57%).

Does anyone know of a more recent study of university policies concerning copyrighted materials in the United States?  Are there similar studies of policies in other countries?  As a side note, for a simple and helpful guide for intellectual property issues (United States) for professors offering online courses, see UC Irvine’s website.