[Ip-health] Central public role in biotech innovation

[robert weissman]

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Universities drive biotech advancement
Clive Cookson

May 7, 2007
Financial Times

Universities and public research institutes, rather than companies, are
driving advances in biotechnology, according to a worldwide patent
analysis released today at the Bio conference in Boston. However, there
is a global disparity in academic patenting activity, with the US and
Japan well ahead of Europe.

The study by Marks & Clerk, the UK-based intellectual property firm,
analysed biotech patenting by uni-versities, public bodies and companies
between 2002 and 2006. Gareth Williams, co-author of the report,
exp-ressed surprise at the dominance of the academic sector; he was
disappointed but less surprised by Europe's poor performance in
comparison with the US and Asia.

The top three patenting organisations were the Japan Science and
Technology Agency with 1,022 biotech patent families - groups of patents
associated with a single invention - the University of California with
543, and the US government with 443, mainly from the National Institutes
of Health.

The highest ranking company, Genentech of the US, appears at number four
in the table, with 421 patent families, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals
is sixth. But the top 20 is dominated by American universities.

All the most influential patents, in terms of the frequency with which
they are cited by other researchers, come from universities. By this
measure the champion institution is the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, which holds, alone or jointly with Harvard University, the
three most cited patents.

Oxford has the best pat-enting performance of any European university,
with 65 patent families - less than half the number assignedto each of
the universitiesof Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Johns Hopkins, Stanford
and Columbia in the US.

"The academic performance from Europe reflects badly on its leading
institutions, which are still failing to translate their enormous skills
base into commercial reality," Dr Williams said. "Academic patents are
very valuable . . . as they cover fundamental technologies."

Europe's corporate performance is slightly better. Novozymes of Denmark
is the highest ranking European company, with 162 patent families. The
study singles out Denmark as the outstanding European country for its
biotech patenting growth; Danish companies and universities have trebled
their filings from 75 in 2002 to 225 in 2006. Last year Danish companies
were the third largest country group in the study after the US and Japan.

Over the five years of the study, the biotech sector - academic and
corporate - has become "much more mature and less speculative" in its
patenting.

In 2002 patenting activity "included a high level of speculative,
sequence-based inventions related to genetic engineering. By 2006 this
figure falls by 78 per cent and the focus of research be-comes much more
concentrated." Hot areas for patenting are now antibodies, gene therapy
and stem cells.

"This suggests that lessons have been learnt as to what is patentable
and, more importantly, commercially worthwhile," Dr Williams said. As a
result, the global volume of biotech patenting had declined since 2002.