A MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS: PATENT POLICY ANALYSIS

In this paper, peculiarities of the process of development of agricultural biotechnological innovations are considered, in particular the distinction between R&D races for gene discoveries and subsequent competition for developing their marketable applications in the form of genetically modified (GM) crops, the results of which determine the payoffs of discovering a gene. A formal two-stage model is specified and analyzed with regard to how different patent protection regimes and other government policies affect firm's R&D strategies and the welfare realized from an innovation. We find that different policy measures affect the outcomes of the two stages of biotechnological innovation differently, which leaves some ambiguity as to which patent protection regimes might be strictly preferable. However, general direction of policy improvement is identified.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Developing a new business model for enabling research - the case of the ACPFG in Australia

Publisher's postprint archived as permitted by publisher.The way in which companies, research centres and educational institutions are organised and structured may provide a competitive advantage for commercialisation, in particular if companies are dependent on the deployment of complementary assets and capabilities by third parties. This paper presents the case of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), a private agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) company specialising in early stage Research and Development (R&D) to produce superior adapted cereal varieties, tolerant to abiotic stress conditions such as drought, frost, salt, or mineral toxicity, all of which have a direct and negative impact on plant growth and crop productivity. The organisational structure of the company has been influenced and shaped by Government policy, shareholders expectations and trends in the agbiotech industrial organisation. It has proved attractive to potential alliance partners for collaborative R&D and commercialisation. We present the ACPFG as a new business model to fund basic research and facilitate technology transfer.Stephanie C. Agius, David Corkindale, Antonio G. Dottore, Michael Gilber

The Dynamics of Knowledge Accumulation, Regulation and Appropriability in the Pharma-Biotech Sector: Policy Issues

Discussion of reasons for regulation in the pharmaceutical industr

Comment to the SEC in Support of the Enhanced Disclosure of Patent and Technology License Information

Intangible assets like IP constitute a large share of the value of firms, and the US economy generally. Accurate information on the intellectual property (IP) holdings and transactions of publicly-traded firms facilitates price discovery in the market and reduces transaction costs. While public understanding of the innovation economy has been expanded by a large stream of empirical research using patent data, and more recently trademark information this research is only as good as the accuracy and completeness of the data it builds upon. In contrast with information about patents and trademarks, good information about IP licensing is much less publicly available. Although IP royalties provide large in-bound trade flows to the United States, remarkably little is known about the economic realities of IP transactions. But not only are licensing royalties economically impactful, but building a better understanding of how markets for technology operate in a modern, innovation economy is important for the transparency of markets, and to the public and policy-makers. Open data on innovation is currently siloed, fragmented, and unfedeRrarated across a number of repositories (some electronic and others physical) including the Administrative Office of the Courts, Secretary of State Offices, Copyright Office, IRS, USPTO, SEC, FDA, NSF, SBA and others, raising search and discovery costs and undermining the goals of open data. Data on “comparables” tend to be thin in the industry, a situation that may offer a sub-optimal market environment for startup firms: these young entities often rely on selling intangibles, but have low bargaining power, and limited resources to invest in search and price discovery. Disclosures of material licenses and intellectual property information to the SEC addresses a number of existing gaps, with the potential to play an expanded role. In fact, IP license information is not widely available to the public through any other federal agency, even in cases where the IP was federally funded. Thus the IP license information available through the SEC is an invaluable resource to the public. One major limitation with the existing SEC licensing information, however, is that it is often difficult to find and manipulate. An impediment arises since the data are not tagged or designed to be easily combined with other information sources. One of us, for example, has sought to determine which firms have SEC-registered patent licenses over a period of time for the purpose of establishing a public database of licenses obtained through FOIA requests. However, there is no straightforward way for the public to search for this information, in the SEC record or otherwise. The overall thrust of our comments is to commend the SEC on the valuable disclosures its requirements encourage and to recommend preserving and augmenting, rather than diminishing them, in order to 1) produce more useful data and 2) reduce the costs of discovering and using existing data disclosed to the SEC. In many cases, an SEC requirement will not require reporting entities to create new information (e.g., when disclosing patents or licenses) but it will greatly reduce the costs to third parties of searching for this information

Ready for Tomorrow: Demand-Side Emerging Skills for the 21st Century

As part of the Ready for the Job demand-side skill assessment, the Heldrich Center explored emerging work skills that will affect New Jersey's workforce in the next three to five years. The Heldrich Center identified five specific areas likely to generate new skill demands: biotechnology, security, e-learning, e-commerce, and food/agribusiness. This report explores the study's findings and offers recommendations for improving education and training in New Jersey

Educating the educators: Incorporating bioinformatics into biological science education in Malaysia

Bioinformatics can be defined as a fusion of computational and biological sciences. The urgency to process and analyse the deluge of data created by proteomics and genomics studies has caused bioinformatics to gain prominence and importance. However, its multidisciplinary nature has created a unique demand for specialist trained in both biology and computing. In this review, we described the components that constitute the bioinformatics field and distinctive education criteria that are required to produce individuals with bioinformatics training. This paper will also provide an introduction and overview of bioinformatics in Malaysia. The existing bioinformatics scenario in Malaysia was surveyed to gauge its advancement and to plan for future bioinformatics education strategies. For comparison, we surveyed methods and strategies used in education by other countries so that lessons can be learnt to further improve the implementation of bioinformatics in Malaysia. It is believed that accurate and sufficient steerage from the academia and industry will enable Malaysia to produce quality bioinformaticians in the future

Comment to the SEC in Support of the Enhanced Disclosure of Patent and Technology License Information

Intangible assets like IP constitute a large share of the value of firms, and the US economy generally. Accurate information on the intellectual property (IP) holdings and transactions of publicly-traded firms facilitates price discovery in the market and reduces transaction costs. While public understanding of the innovation economy has been expanded by a large stream of empirical research using patent data, and more recently trademark information this research is only as good as the accuracy and completeness of the data it builds upon. In contrast with information about patents and trademarks, good information about IP licensing is much less publicly available. Although IP royalties provide large in-bound trade flows to the United States, remarkably little is known about the economic realities of IP transactions. But not only are licensing royalties economically impactful, but building a better understanding of how markets for technology operate in a modern, innovation economy is important for the transparency of markets, and to the public and policy-makers. Open data on innovation is currently siloed, fragmented, and unfedeRrarated across a number of repositories (some electronic and others physical) including the Administrative Office of the Courts, Secretary of State Offices, Copyright Office, IRS, USPTO, SEC, FDA, NSF, SBA and others, raising search and discovery costs and undermining the goals of open data. Data on “comparables” tend to be thin in the industry, a situation that may offer a sub-optimal market environment for startup firms: these young entities often rely on selling intangibles, but have low bargaining power, and limited resources to invest in search and price discovery. Disclosures of material licenses and intellectual property information to the SEC addresses a number of existing gaps, with the potential to play an expanded role. In fact, IP license information is not widely available to the public through any other federal agency, even in cases where the IP was federally funded. Thus the IP license information available through the SEC is an invaluable resource to the public. One major limitation with the existing SEC licensing information, however, is that it is often difficult to find and manipulate. An impediment arises since the data are not tagged or designed to be easily combined with other information sources. One of us, for example, has sought to determine which firms have SEC-registered patent licenses over a period of time for the purpose of establishing a public database of licenses obtained through FOIA requests. However, there is no straightforward way for the public to search for this information, in the SEC record or otherwise. The overall thrust of our comments is to commend the SEC on the valuable disclosures its requirements encourage and to recommend preserving and augmenting, rather than diminishing them, in order to 1) produce more useful data and 2) reduce the costs of discovering and using existing data disclosed to the SEC. In many cases, an SEC requirement will not require reporting entities to create new information (e.g., when disclosing patents or licenses) but it will greatly reduce the costs to third parties of searching for this information

Corporate Governance and Firm Strategy in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Using the case of the pharmaceutical industry, this paper assesses how the leading German and UK firms are adapting to changes in their competitive environment, at both the national and international level. We attempt to link how firms create governance structures (management decision-making, the organisation of the R&D process, etc.), and the national system of innovation, impact the innovation strategies adopted in leading German and UK firms. Our results show that first, the firm competencies created in order to compete globally may still originate within national economies, in part because the generation of R&D remains relatively national. Second, towards the end of the 1970s, the scientific basis in the pharmaceutical industry began to change rapidly. The evidence presented shows that UK firms rapidly developed new competencies in biotechnology and other research areas in response to the structural changes. However, German firms tended, until very recently, to maintain and in some cases strengthen competencies in traditional research methods based on organic chemistry. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG - (Corporate Governance und Unternehmensstrategie in der pharmazeutischen Industrie) Am Beispiel der pharmazeutischen Industrie wird in diesem Beitrag aufgezeigt, wie führende deutsche und britische Firmen sich an Änderungen in ihrer Unternehmensumwelt anpassen, sowohl der nationalen wie auch der internationalen Umwelt. Es wird gezeigt, wie die Unternehmen Governance-Strukturen (Managemententscheidungen, die Organisation von FuE-Prozessen etc.) schaffen und wie nationale Innovationssysteme die Innovationsstrategien beeinflussen, die von führenden deutschen und britischen Firmen verfolgt werden. Erstens gelangt die Studie zu dem Ergebnis, daß die Kompetenz der Unternehmen so ausgerichtet wurde, daß sie für den globalen Wettbewerb fit sind, aber ihre Wurzeln dennoch innerhalb der nationalen Volkswirtschaften behalten, teilweise deshalb, weil FuE verhältnismäßig national fundiert ist. Zweitens begann zum Ende der siebziger Jahre eine dramatische Änderung in der wissenschaftlichen Basis der pharmazeutischen Industrie. Diese Evidenz zeigt, daß britische Firmen rasch neue Kompetenz in Biotechnologie und anderen Forschungsbereichen entwickelten, um auf die Änderungen zu reagieren. Deutsche Unternehmen tendierten jedoch noch bis vor kurzem dazu, ihre bisherige Kompetenz beizubehalten und in manchen Fällen in traditionellen Forschungsbereichen, basierend auf organischer Chemie, sogar zu verstärken.corporate governance; firm strategy; national systems of innovation; pharmaceuticals

The economic impact of biotechnology

Biotechnology

Markets for technology (why do we see them, why don't we see more of them and why we should care)

This essay explores the nature, the functioning, and the economic and policy implications of markets for technology. Today, the outsourcing of research and development activities is more common than in the past, and specialized technology suppliers have emerged in many industries. In a sense, the Schumpeterian vision of integrating R&D with manufacturing and distribution is being confronted by the older Smithian vision of division of labor. The existence and efficacy of markets for technology can profoundly influence the creation and diffusion of new knowledge, and hence, economic growth of countries and the competitive position of companies. The economic and managerial literatures have touched upon some aspects of the nature of these markets. However, a thorough understanding of how markets for technology work is still lacking. In this essay we address two main questions. First, what are the factors that enable a market for technology to exist and function effectively? Specifically we look at the role of industry structure, the nature of knowledge, and intellectual property rights and related institutions. Second, we ask what the implications of such markets are for the boundaries of the firm, the specialization and division of labor in the economy, industry structure, and economic growth. We build on this discussion to develop the implications of our work for public policy and corporate strategy