Breakthrough as single European patent is one step closer

“After more than 50 years of negotiation, the EU Competitiveness Council yesterday decided to authorise the use of the enhanced co-operation procedure for the creation of a single European patent …” (more)

[John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, 11 March]

European Court of Justice rejects stem cell patents

“The European Court of Justice today issued a preliminary opinion that procedures involving established human embryonic stem (hES) cell lines are not patentable …” (more)

[Alison Abbott , Nature, 10 March]

Who owns the research outputs?

“For ten years, through the 1990s, I worked as a professor of law in the University of Hull in Northern England. Every so often I would be present at the kind of conversation where people mused on missed opportunities …” (more)

[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 2 March]

Managing University Inventions – With Privilege Comes Accountability

“If the Supreme Court gives universities greater control over the inventions created by their faculty and grad students, the Court should also require universities to publish metrics that shed light into how they are managing their invention portfolios …” (more)

[Melba Kurman, Blogging Innovation, 26 February]

Historic patent deal within Europe’s reach

“Europe is just a few, short steps away from a system in which scientists, companies and lone inventors will be eligible to apply for a single patent that is applicable in all subscribing countries …” (more)

[Inga Vesper, Exquisite Life, 25 February]

Europe-wide patent advances

“It was expected, but still a relief for promoters of European innovation. Yesterday, the European Parliament voted in favour of a common EU patent system, under a so-called enhanced cooperation procedure …” (more)

[Alison Abbott, The Great Beyond, 16 February]

New patent scheme is set to be approved by EU

“Businesses which take out European patents could save tens of thousands of euro under a new scheme due to be approved by the European Parliament …” (more)

[Kieron Wood, Sunday Business Post, 6 February]

Patents, Not Just Politics, Create Obstacles to University Stem-Cell Research

“For the past several years, scientists who see limitless medical benefits from stem-cell research have battled through hard limits to their ability to pursue their work. The problem is not just the political debate on whether such research is ethical …” (more)

[Paul Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 January]

Lessons from Bayh–Dole

“Developing countries wanting to boost commercialization of their academic research should learn from the mistakes of US patenting legislation …” (more)

[Bhaven N Sampat, Nature, 9 December]

Supreme Court To Decide University Patent Case

“The Supreme Court will decide whether patents on inventions that arise from federally-funded research must go to the university where the inventor worked …” (more)

[Huffington Post, 1 November]

Has the US government abandoned gene patents?

“In an unexpected move certain to make queasy biotechnology executives reach for their Pepto Bismol, the United States government issued a brief last Friday that strongly argues against gene patents …” (more)

[Heidi Ledford, The Great Beyond, 1 November]

EU patent plan could boost research

“The EU presidency is seeking to resolve the sensitive question of what languages should be used to write European patents, which could have a knock-on effect of encouraging more research innovation in European universities …” (more)

[Jan Petter Myklebust, University World News, 24 October]

Gray litigation against UWA unnecessary, court rules

“Litigation that destroyed the assumption of universities that they automatically owned the inventions of their academics need never have happened, a Federal Court judge has ruled. The University of Western Australia has been saddled with millions of dollars in costs after it spent five years unsuccessfully pursuing former surgery professor and inventor Bruce Gray to the highest court in the land …” (more)

[Bernard Lane, The Australian, 23 June]

Irish patents fall below EU average

“The number of patents granted to Irish companies and researchers increased by 18 per cent last year, but Ireland still lags well behind the European average for patents. The European Patent Office (EPO) granted 145 patents to Ireland last year, up from 122 for 2008 …” (more)

[Ian Kehoe, Sunday Business Post, 9 May]

Gene Patents Under Legal Attack

“Federal court hearings continued Tuesday on a lawsuit that could transform biotechnology in the United States by eliminating gene patents. The case hinges around the claims of Utah-based Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2, a pair of genes closely linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad ‘owns’ the genes, and says its patents make it possible to profit on diagnostic tests. The company argues that if you remove the patents, the tests — indeed, commercial biotechnology as we know it — will vanish …” (more)

[Brandon Keim, Wired, 4 February]

Inventing a New Economy

“As the economic cataclysm of the past two years has unfolded, there has been no shortage of data to help us understand what has already happened and what might happen next. GDP growth, unemployment rates, trade and federal deficit levels, inflation rates, foreclosure rates, capital and leverage ratios—all have been paramount in our conversation …” (more)

[Eliot Spitzer, Slate, 28 December]

Innovation, universities and patents

“Patents encourage innovation – an inventor who is awarded a patent over an invention can exploit it and profit from it, at least according to the Irish Patents Office. Innovation therefore matter, and Innovation Dublin 2009, a week long festival of public events aimed at promoting and stimulating innovation and creativity in the city, begins today. The festival, co-ordinated by Dublin City Council, is a key project of the Creative Dublin Alliance, a collaborative group made up of Dublin local authorities, universities, state agencies, businesses and the not-for-profit sector, which was launched in Trinity’s Science Gallery earlier this year …” (more)

[Eoin O’Dell, Cearta, 14 October]

Painful Lesson on Patents

“Giving someone something and agreeing to give someone something are two very different things – and Stanford University officials, to their dismay, are probably more aware of that distinction now than they were just a few days ago. On Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit told a lower court judge to dismiss a lawsuit Stanford had brought accusing the pharmaceutical company Roche of infringing its patent on a technology that measures the concentration of HIV in blood plasma. Stanford lost the case, essentially, because its policy on who owns inventions created using university resources required researchers, at some future date, to ‘agree to assign’ ownership rights to the university; the comparable policy at Cetus, the Roche-owned company with which the Stanford researcher did outside work, in turn, said that an inventor ‘will assign and do hereby assign’ his or her rights …” (more)

[Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, 2 October]

NBER Paper: Governance and Performance of Research Universities

“ABSTRACT: We investigate how university governance affects research output, measured by patenting and international university research rankings. For both European and US universities, we generate several measures of autonomy, governance, and competition for research funding. We show that university autonomy and competition are positively correlated with university output, both among European countries and among US public universities. We then identity a (political) source of exogenous shocks to funding of US universities. We demonstrate that, when a state’s universities receive a positive funding shock, they produce more patents if they are more autonomous and face more competition …” (more)

[Liam Delaney, Geary Behavioural Research Blog, 14 August]

The missing link

“Why are American universities so much better at patenting their work than their European counterparts? Over the past ten years, league tables that rank universities around the world have come into vogue. One of those tables, by the Milken Institute, focuses on the ability of universities to develop and commercialise patents. The Milken Institute Biotech Patent Rankings Composite Index, 2000-2004 shows that of the top 30 universities in the world, according to biotechnology patents granted, American institutions captured 23 places. Only two European universities – the University of London and the University of Oxford – made the list. What explains this disparity? It is not a question of American university researchers being superior to their European counterparts …” (more)

[Craig Evan Klafter, Times Higher Education, 23 July]