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Licensing Trade Secrets in Academia
by David J. Aston
(This
document is a .PDF file. Get a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader here.)
Academic institutions now make technology transfer a priority. They have been known to license trade secrets, sometimes called “know how,” in conjunction with a traditional license of a patent or copyright. Sometimes the institution initiates this structure, sometimes the corporate licensee requests it. How sound is this practice, and how should such licenses, if they are to be done, be written? More
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Drafting
Licensing Agreements For Biotech Research Tools: Key Provisions, Terms
and Alternatives
by David J. Aston
(This
document is a .PDF file. Get a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader here.)
Licensing agreements have been critical to the biotechnology industry
since its very inception. Today, deal making, particularly in the
Research Tool area, has reached dizzying heights. The pharmaceutical
deal tracking service “Pharmadeals” reports that it tracks over 140
new deals every month. Signals Magazine reports that, in the first
half of 2001, earned alliance revenues of biotech companies were $1.2
billion, with Research Tool companies accounting for approximately
half of that total. Several trends have fueled this fire: first, in
order for the pharmaceutical industry to continue to grow, more and
more new “blockbuster” products are needed, intensifying the need
for research; second, there has been an enormous growth in the research
technology that is available to the pharmaceutical industry; thirdly,
more biotechnology companies are being formed with the goal of becoming
research tool companies, rather than traditional stand-alone biopharmaceutical
companies. More
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Patenting
of Genes
by David J. Aston
(This document is a .PDF file. Get a free copy
of Adobe Acrobat Reader here.)
As a patent attorney and Human Genome Project enthusiast, I believe
that the lead-in to your recent report on Craig Venter's patenting
of uncharacterized cDNAs deserves some clarification. patenting genes
relating to genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis (CF), Huntingon's
disease (HD) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is not, as stated
in your article, "business as usual". This is illustrated
by a preliminary patent search, summarized in the table, directed
towards these disorders.
This table indicates, first, that there are numberous, potentially
conflicting, patent applications being filed in this area. This is
frequently true in the case of biotechnology patents. More
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