Nope, we’re not going to hell in a handcart

Posted on April 12, 2012 by

The refreshingly upbeat Mark Stevenson breezed through Wellington just before Easter, giving his take on why the world’s NOT going to hell in a handcart.

The author of ‘An optimist’s tour of the future’, Stevenson’s been accused by some of having rose tinted glasses.

“But we should have an unashamed optimism about the future,” says the British-based writer, comic and scientist. In his book, he mentions some of the work being carried out by Blenheim-based Aquaflow as well as Carbonscape.

He gave numerous examples of humans taking better control of the planet’s biology.

The cost of genetic mapping is outstripping Moore’s Law by a factor of four he says. Mapping an individual’s entire genetic sequence currently costs $3000, but will soon be $1.

Stevenson also argues that the world doesn’t have an energy crisis. “We have an energy conversion crisis,” he says. In 20-30 years time, the cost of solar energy should make it an utterly acceptable option.

One thing he is worried about is whether institutions are that good at innovation.

At that level, “we have become terrified of making mistakes,” he says. “But, if we’re not prepared to make mistakes, we’ll never come up with something original.”

Increasingly Stevenson believes that individuals will be defined, “not by what you own, but by what you create.”

Biotechnology and nanotechnology are currently where information technology was in 1965, and in that regard, “the future is up for grabs.”

“The future could be better, it is up to us and individuals to do it. Our future will be defined by the values we choose.”

As an aside, Stevenson pointed out grasslands in Australia and South America, where side by side across a fence, one side was bare, the other a thriving pasture.

The ‘technology’?

Rotational grazing.

The result, sustainable food production and carbon sequestered in soils.

Stevenson says some of the world’s pension funds are among the greatest investors in fencing – which is how to manage rotational grazing.

In effect, New Zealand invented this technology. No one has named it, the opportunity still exists. sticK’s argued this case before….see the story here.

Somewhat interestingly, even though Stevenson’s been to New Zealand a number of times, no one has previously pointed out to him that this is the basis of our country’s comparative advantage. He appeared somewhat surprised to find this was the case.

Posted in Early stage science, education, high tech, Innovation, SciBlogs, sustainability, technology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

IP ownership change spurs new wool research

Posted on April 10, 2012 by

As agriculture’s orphan child, laden with centuries of tradition and structure, coarse wool has recently exhibited a refreshing turn of mind to attempt to spin a new future.

The realisation that wool industry participants weren’t interested in co-investing in generic projects if individual companies didn’t end up owning their own piece of intellectual property has been a major catalyst for change.

Just before the Ministry and Foundation for Research, Science and Technology morphed into the Ministry of Science & Innovation, Wool Industry Research Ltd (a JV of the Wool Research Organisation and MoRST) was formed to manage a five year, $15 million research programme.

This has two components.

1. Industry good investment – essentially doing what’s done today, better. The consortium itself retains/owns the IP
2. Company specific investment – ideas are co-invested/funded, and out of this leveraged funding, the project sponsor owns the IP

WIRL general manager Ian Cuthbertson says the second form of investment, being a new path for collaboration in R&D, has taken participants a while to come onboard.

“For the first six months, we didn’t have any co-funded (30-50%) projects,” he says.

“Now, moving into our second year, we have over $900,000 of industry cofunding committed.”

However, despite the sponsoring or co-funding company having the rights to any IP generated out of new wool research, it does come with a couple of caveats.

WIRL retains a lien on the IP. Once the outcome of the research is confirmed, a sensible commercialisation target is negotiated to be delivered within an agreed period of time – typically a couple of years.

Cuthbertson says that’s fair, as both taxpayer and wider industry money is being spent on the research, which ultimately benefits the individual company.

“We have to ensure that value is created for NZ from the investment,” he says. “The company could go belly up, or not commit the resources to commercialise properly, or simply change its commercial strategy.”

“We retain the caveat that the R&D needs to be exploited to a reasonable commercial value.”

He says that a couple of these co-invested projects will probably be made public by the industry partners over the next couple of months, and that “there will be real value to the wider industry resulting from most.”

The change to a co-investment, with companies keeping the IP model is a total change in the way that wool related R&D funding had been carried out in the past.

Previously, funding capability and project selection had more been aimed at researchers – who would often, because of the system, be carrying out science in isolation from commercial reality.

“Now we have truely commercially driven R&D, though there is still a core responsibility within the consortium’s investment for fundamental research,” says Cuthbertson.

Such industry good research is driven by a wool industry advisory group from across the sector’s total value chain.

“However, most of the research is more applied, and we’re saying to companies, if you have a good idea, we’ll help you with the science to create the opportunity, you own the IP as long as you take it to market,” he says.

Posted in Development, Early stage science, high tech, Innovation, proprietary, SciBlogs, Science policy, technology | Tagged , | 2 Comments

ACC and Ministry of Health: winners in patent battle over computerised healthcare information ‘connectivity’ invention

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

By guest blogger, Doug Calhoun

Throughout the debate on the patenting of software, a battle has been quietly percolating under the radar over a NZ patent application (NZ525001) that has touched upon just about every issue in the software patent debate. And the outcome has been a complete success for ACC and MoH. A patent application originally accepted by IPONZ has been comprehensively refused by a hearing officer after an opposition process that lasted almost six and a half years.

The link to the decision is here:

The original owner of the patent application was an American firm, Healthtrio Inc:

The invention of NZ 525001 is “a system for communicating health care data from a sender to a receiver”. After it had been examined and accepted by IPONZ in 2005, no less than three major players in healthcare (ACC, MoH and Southern Cross) and Telecom opposed the further step of granting a patent. Since then there have been two interim hearings and an appeal to the High Court before they finally got around to the substantive hearing and decision. Along the way Healthtrio dropped out, but its founder, Dr Hasan, continued to pursue the patent; on the other side Telecom and Southern Cross ceased active participation at an early stage. So in the end it was Dr Hasan against ACC and the Ministry of health.

And why did ACC and MoH oppose? The answer is found in paragraphs [266] to [268] of the decision. ACC had been using its “EMG system” since June 2000. In paragraph [268] the decision refers to evidence that “the EMG system was widely used, with GPs, physiotherapists, ambulance services and hospitals all registered to communicate data with the EMG.” They were worried that they might be sued for using a system they had developed before Healthtrio had filed its original patent application – and they were cross that Healthtrio had tried to patent something that they had already done.

They were more than vindicated. The only difference the hearing officer saw between the EMG system and the Healthtrio one was in the latter’s normalisation of information. But:

“[271] Normalisation is well known from the common general knowledge and it would be a desired outcome that all information appears in a common form in a combined database that is to contain the accumulated data from existing independent databases. The invention claimed is obvious when the prior art is considered alongside the common general knowledge. It would be unfair on the skilled worker to give patent rights which would prevent that skilled worker from its previously enjoyed right to put information into a database and for the information in that databases to be put into a standardised form, something the skilled addressee would have been able to do without any exercise of inventiveness from their common general knowledge.”

The main ground upon which the hearing officer made his decision was that the “specification did not sufficiently and fairly describe the invention and the method by which it is to be performed”. (One theory of the basis for patents is the social contract theory – in return for granting a time limited exclusive exploitation right, the state receives a public disclosure of the invention. But if, as has happened here, the disclosure is not sufficient and fair, the patent applicant has not fulfilled its side of the bargain. So the state declines to grant a patent.)

Paragraphs [103] to [208] explain why. The hearing officer placed a great deal more weight on the evidence of the opponents’ expert witness, Dr David Parry, than on the evidence of the expert witnesses for Healthtrio.

“[073] In conclusion, I agree with the opponents’ analyses of the experts, above, and I consider that little if any weight can be given to the evidence of Dr Desai, Mr Prib and Mr Cooper. The evidence of Dr Parry and Mr Bowden is very relevant, being from experts in the field, and especially experts in the field in New Zealand, New Zealand being ahead of other countries in this technical field, and I consider much weight can be placed on their evidence.”

Dr Parry gave evidence (paragraph [142]) that the term “normalise” as used in the specification “could not … be understood by any reasonable person working in the informatics field based on their experience or knowledge … or on any information in the specification itself.” He expressed similar concerns (in Paragraph [146]) about the meaning of the word “meaning”.

The hearing officer agreed.

The hearing officer noted in paragraphs [160] to [162] that the corresponding European application had also been refused for lack of clarity.

For trainspotters the decision can be downloaded from this link:

To complete the dissection of the Healthtrio application, the hearing officer also found that the invention claimed in claims 26 to 29 had been prior published in two separate earlier US patents; and that the invention claimed was “not an invention”.

The “not an invention” finding was an extension of the obviousness finding, as opposed to a finding that the system was not a “manner of manufacture” – which is at the heart of the debate on the patent exclusion of computer programs. The hearing officer’s conclusion was:

“[275] As I see it, the invention claimed in claims 1 to 25 is a mere collocation of known steps and/or components, in particular the use of a known normalisation step and a known transliteration step in the transmission of data in a known network environment, and particularly in the creation of a common database containing all information contained in a number of existing databases. Each step or component performs its known function without any alteration or synergy. The claims represent mere collocations of known integers and therefore lack inventiveness and are thus unpatentable.

[277] It would be wrong to prevent others in the field from extracting data from several databases to create a single database containing all the information in one place using standard techniques within the common general knowledge of the skilled addressee, as I find to be the case in the claims under consideration.

[278] If one looks beyond the normal extraction of data from a known database into another database, at the ability for a system to automatically understand data in an unknown database and extract that information into another database, then there is mere speculation and a casting of the claims widely to catch future developments that fall within the vague claims. Applicants are only entitled to claim what they have themselves invented. In the present case there is no explanation as to how the system can automatically understand the meaning of data in unknown databases and extract that data into a set of fields in its own database.”

The lesson taught by this decision is that if someone is seeking a software related patent in New Zealand, and they have not done anything more than a rehash of what has gone before, there are tools available under the existing law to put a stop to them.

The process has taken six and a half years. One reason is that the opponents tried to shortcut the process to get a decision only on the issue that ultimately was the decider. But in the end both sides collected and filed extensive detailed evidence on all issues – and that takes time. And the hearing officer did a remarkable job of sifting through it all and producing a detailed but coherent 75 page decision within three months, including Christmas.

And we can all do a metaphorical haka over his finding that New Zealand is ahead of others in this technical field.

And speculate as to why the Australian equivalent patent (AU 2002211889) was granted with claims identical to those refused here; and the US equivalent (US 7,664,660), while containing many more qualifications in its main claim, still uses the terms “normalise” and “meaning” that were found to be meaningless here.

~ Doug Calhoun
IP Mentor

Posted in Development, Early stage science, education, high tech, Innovation, Patent, SciBlogs, sustainability | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Angels, unsurprisingly, belt-tightening

Posted on April 3, 2012 by

We shouldn’t be too surprised that the latest figures released on the Young Company Finance Index show a slight reduction in the amount of investment by Angels.

After all, there’s only so much ‘spare’ money that Angels have to punt on such investments, where only one or two out of 10 will (historically) be screamingly successful.

The Angel community, of which it is estimated there are about 200 individuals spread throughout New Zealand, has tapped into a large number of Kiwis who are prepared to back new business growth.

The community’s actively looking for new members, but in the meantime original Angel investors are waiting for payback from the (to date from 2006) 407 deals that have been done. Of the current Angel crop, till they get some returns, they’re necessarily tightening their belts a bit.

Hence, as noted in YCF, the average size of first up deals has fallen, and there’s an increasing amount of follow-on investment also taking place. The second half of 2011 saw just over $13 million invested in 44 deals, while almost $31m was invested in 97 deals across the entire year. The average deal size was $323,549, down from $540,000 in 2006 when the index kicked off.

Angels clearly prefer web company oriented investments, followed by technology hardware and equipment, then biotech and life-sciences. (See Angel press release here).

There’s a good reason for the IT bias. Based in a corner of the south-west Pacific, things webby are the most scalable, and tend not to be as capital intensive. By the same token they’re an all or nothing investment, with no residual asset such as plant, machinery, drugs or IP if things go belly-up.

The web’s all in the ether, and when it doesn’t work, an Angel investor (and the founders for that matter) have blown everything.

Given the activity of Angels, it’s amazing to consider that they’ve only been going in NZ for five years. It would be shuddering to think of where or how innovative business founders would obtain investment capital without their presence. Part proof of that was BioVittoria’s inability attract enough investment via a proposed sharemarket listing.

So, imagine an environment without Angels – hardly bears thinking about.

Posted in Angel investment, Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, IT, proprietary, SciBlogs, start-up, technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Developers invited to a northern hemisphere ‘Summer of Code’

Posted on April 1, 2012 by

A couple of New Zealand based businesses are in on the wider opportunity for New Zealand-based trainee coders to gain invaluable experience (and pay) through Google’s Summer of Code.

University students in New Zealand will have a unique opportunity to be paid to work and create new features for some of the best known and most used software on the planet.

SilverStripe a Wellington-based, global provider of freeium based website building and content management systems based on open source software, and the R project (to perform statistical analysis) are one of a number of world-wide organisations who put their names up, and were selected, for Google’s offer.

Under the deal, developers who must be enrolled as a university student have until April 6 to apply for the mentoring roles after submitting proposals to 180 pieces of software that organisations/mentors would like some work on. (Developers and others can find out more here.

If selected, and the developer doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same country as where the organisation esides, students will receive a US$5000 stipend for the almost three month exercise. US$500 goes to the individual mentoring and providing real-world software-development exposure to students.

Students must execute to milestones laid out in their accepted project proposal, with one of Google’s goals being to “get more open source code created and released for the benefit of all.”

Oh, there will be more open source project identified and new developers ‘created’ as a result too.

Silverstripe’s Sigurd Magnusson says it is an excellent opportunity to have talented people working on his open source project that it currently couldn’t carry out. Some of Silverstripe’s software has been modified and improved by people all around the world, but having a few extra people dedicated to working on a specific project will be of great benefit to all says Magnusson.

Some of the 180 projects see here
in Africa, often working on older computers, see here, through to crowd sourcing biology see here. allowing researchers to more easily share ideas.

Other projects include some of the celebrities of the open source world, among them Apache, Debian, Git (the linux) Kernel, Mozilla (Firefox) phpMyAdmin, postgreSQL, and the software behind Wikipedia.

Silverstripe was also involved in Google’s SoC in 2007, and reselection again this year is a nice acknowledgement of their software in the global industry says Magnusson.

Magnusson was understated about SilverStripe’s strong performance in the international market, but being invited back after a previous SoC in 2007 will never be considered a bad thing.

Posted in cloud computing, Entrepreneur, high tech, IT, open source, SciBlogs, technology | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The 7 Deadly Sins get an innovative makeover

Posted on March 29, 2012 by

As a bit of a sucker for an allegory, attaching thoughts about innovation to the seven deadly sins is a clever ploy and play.

That said though I’d be hard-pressed to name them (pride, sloth, gluttony, lust, envy, wrath, greed).

Scott Anthony directs the Asia-Pacific office of Innosight, and has recently published a book ‘The Little Black Book of Innovation: How it Works, How to Do It’.

Innovation Excellence highlighted the 7 Deadly Sins in a recent blog by Matthew E May (see here).

These sins have a strong parallel with the ‘Ten Design Principles’ by Designindustry’s Dorenda Britten, which provide a way to carry out a holistic development of a new product or service. See the sticK story here where Britten maintains that Kiwis have to learn to identify and kill bad ideas.

But, given the attractions of its allegorical nature, here’s the 7 Deadly Sins of Innovation laid out in sticK.

1. Pride
The sin of pride innovation is forcing your view of quality onto the marketplace, which often results in overshooting. The easiest way to avoid the sin of pride is by taking an external viewpoint to make sure you understand how the customer measures quality. Make sure you are grounded in what the market wants, not what you want.

2. Sloth
Are your innovation efforts slowing to a crawl? That’s sloth. More often than not, innovation simply takes too long. By the time a company gets around to doing something, the window of opportunity has closed. Why does innovation take so long? It’s not really laziness. It’s that people work on the wrong activities, typically by prioritizing analysis over action. It’s all too easy to fill your day with activities that make it feel as if you are making progress tackling a problem.
Avoid it by releasing your inner Edison: “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

3. Gluttony
Gluttony is suffering from an addiction to abundant resources and leads to overly slow, overly linear innovation efforts. Deep pockets allow companies to spend too many resources following the wrong strategy. They throw bodies against a problem, but everyone knows that small teams typically move faster than large teams.Avoid it by practicing selective scarcity: constrain resources in the early stages of innovation to enable creativity.

4. Lust
It’s easy to get tempted and distracted by pursuing too many bells and whistles, too many bright, shiny objects. Avoid it by focusing your innovation efforts, remembering that destruction often precedes creation. Stopping is as important as starting. Lust after too many things, and you’ll find that you end up with nothing. Good innovators carefully choose the opportunities they go after.

5. Envy
Envy occurs when innovators inside a company proclaim themselves the chosen ones, and create an us-vs-them relationship between your main business and your new growth areas. Remember, without that core business, there is no corporate innovation. Actively celebrate the efforts and successes of both old and new business areas to avoid the sin of Envy.

6. Wrath
A wrathful leader punishes innovation failures, using lines such as “Failure is not an option.” But in innovation failure is most certainly an option. What kind of message does it send if you punish people who take well-thought-out risks that don’t pan out? Beautiful business plans don’t always turn into beautiful businesses. Avoid wrath by rewarding behaviour, not just outcomes.

7. Greed
Greed has its advantage, but innovators need to make sure they are greedy for the right thing. Greed is sinful when you’re being impatient about growth, and can lead to prioritizing low-potential markets and opportunities. If you look for quick growth, you are forced to look to what exists. The best innovators avoid the temptation to go after large, obvious, immediate markets. These people can be patient for growth. They should absolutely be greedy for results that demonstrate that the approach they are following has merits.

Posted in Angel investment, Development, Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, SciBlogs, Science, technology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Coarse wool’s new course weaving a different path

Posted on March 27, 2012 by

New Zealand’s forgotten fibre’s doing its best to get itself off the mat.

Coarse wool’s course over the past five decades has been almost unremittingly down – both in price and perception.

There’s been numerous, mostly ill-fated, attempts to reverse this trend.

A couple of innovative moves last year by the industry might be showing some green shoots of promise however.

1. Wool Research Organisation of NZ Inc/Fahrenheit 212 – new uses venture
2. Wool Industry Research Consortium – new projects (see separate story)

Wool Research contracted New York-based, New Zealander headed Fahrenheit 212 to investigate new market uses for wool at the beginning of last year (see stories here and here). After a hiccup or two, mostly Christchurch earthquake related, F212 reported back last October to self-selecting people who wanted to hear what they’d come up with.

F212 matched coarse wool research products with potential market applications, and came up with the following four areas, (there’s still a bit of confidentiality around this, so apologies for vagueness).

1. Beauty care applications
2. Active apparel applications
3. Bedding
4. Infant care

F212 usually works with large corporates assisting them to identify and develop new products or value propositions. In this wool case a large part of F212’s success fee is seeing new businesses get off the ground and producing products. One of its main recommendations was not to attempt to take a final product through to market, but to produce a new ingredient to on-sell in a business-to-business proposition to marketers. (Goretex, used by many different clothing manufacturers and supporting a US$6 billion market was given as an example).

Well, four months after F212’s Christchurch and Auckland show and tells, commercial propositions for three of the four are being put together.

Four separate groups expressed interest in the beauty care concept.

“We’re encouraging a value chain approach, linking supply, manufacture and marketing,” says Wool Research’s general manager Ian Cuthbertson.

Somewhat ironically, and as an aside, as NZ sheep numbers fall, the guarantee of wool supply is something that will have to be carefully monitored.

Cuthbertson says the business cases for all four areas are still being worked on. Wool Research will financially assist the R&D required by the interested parties looking at the opportunities.

Each of the areas requires further investment in R&D as well as commercial analysis to scientifically back up the consumer benefits claimed within the products, and to support development of the market opportunity.

Companies assessing the opportunities are keen to identify appropriate international market linkages before they commit to investment in the concept says Cuthbertson.

The baby product needs more work on its business case in order for NZ industry to consider it a compelling proposition, but it is agreed that this is an area that wool should be excelling in. If necessary, Wool Research will invest further through the wool consortium to flesh out the infant care opportunity, but prefers to do so with the support and direction of a potential commercialising company.

However the concept that has most opened New Zealanders’ eyes has been that of ‘ingredient marketing’.

Making an added value product with attributes and functionality at the right price, and taking this to brand owners isn’t rocket science.

But it hasn’t been done by the NZ wool industry in significant scale – apart from carpet yarn spinners.

Normally we have attempted to export consumer ready goods – a hard thing to succeed in from New Zealand without excellent international distribution networks.

Generating a consumer brand costs heaps; partnering with European and American companies to carry out this end of the operation means value can ideally be produced at the ingredient level in New Zealand says Cuthbertson.

Footnote: sticK has a stronger than average interest in wool, coming off a Southland sheep farm, and having ‘gained experienced (i.e. failed) in a wool product venture, ‘Funkball’ himself (see here for an old website). But, as a product that we do well, there’s potential yet in the fibre and in matching its attributes to different applications. If some of these potential wool ‘ingredients’ take off, sheep farmers and the country will have a significant ‘new’ valuable product.

Posted in high tech, Innovation, Prototyping, SciBlogs, Science, sustainability, technology | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Optimising autoimmune treatment patent invalid: a ‘Law of Nature’ is not a law passed by Congress

Posted on March 23, 2012 by

By guest blogger Doug Calhoun

On 20 March the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a decision unanimously allowing an appeal by the Mayo Clinic and declaring invalid two patents that a lower court had found Mayo to be infringing: (see here)

The background to the invention is described on the web page of one of the inventors: (see here)

In Yves Théoret’s own words:

“[We study] the relationships that exist between concentrations of medications and their metabolites (medication transformation products) in plasma and blood cells, and therapeutic response, according to genetic characteristics of individuals or a given population (French Canadians, Amerindians, American Blacks, Asians). These characteristics (or polymorphisms) can translate into a deceleration or an acceleration in the enzymatic transformation of medication and/or an amplification or reduction in medicated response on specific tissue sites. By determining these various variables, it is possible to individualize and optimise therapeutic treatment while minimizing toxic effects.”

“Our studies with thiopurines (6-mercaptopuirine or Purinethol; azathioprine or Imuran) administered to children have made it possible to validate this axiom. Thus, patients with an activity deficiency of a particular transferase enzyme (thiopurine methyltransferase) have higher concentrations of active metabolites (nucleotides of 6-thioguanine) and a higher percentage of therapeutic response than patients who do not have reduced enzymatic activity. The sex and age of the patient are also determining factors when it comes to the pharmacokinetics of the medication and therapeutic response. Facing the obvious impracticality of performing pharmacokinetics (measuring the concentration of the medication and its metabolites per unit of time) on all drugs administered to children with various ailments, we also study the possible relationships between the intensity of the drug dose (quantity administered per unit of time) and the therapeutic response as evaluated by various parameters (white blood cell count, gastric acidity, hepatic enzymes). Specialized software makes it possible to determine these relationships.”

In the words of the patents, the invention “provides a method of optimising therapeutic efficacy of 6-mercaptopurine drug treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder” – the goldilocks level of dosage.

The SCOTUS decision (pages 5 and 6) focused on one representative claim (claims define the invention of a patent – the rest is background):

“A method of optimizing therapeutic efficacy for treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder, comprising:
(a) administering a drug providing 6-thioguanine to a subject having said immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder; and
(b) determining the level of 6-thioguanine in said subject having said immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder,
wherein the level of 6-thioguanine less than about 230 µmol per 8×108 red blood cells indicates a need to increase the amount of said drug subsequently administered to said subject, and
wherein the level of 6-thioguanine greater than about 400 µmol per 8×108 red blood cells indicates a need to decrease the amount of said drug subsequently administered to said subject.”

The decision then went on to analyse the claims. On page 11 it came to the conclusion:

“… the claims inform a relevant audience about certain laws of nature; any additional steps consist of well understood, routine, conventional activity already engaged in by the scientific community; and those steps, when viewed as a whole, add nothing significant beyond the sum of their parts taken separately.”

Going back a step, SCOTUS was making a determination of whether or not the invention claimed was patent eligible – whether it fitted within the definition of an invention:

“Any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.”

It did.

But then SCOTUS went on (from page 2) to consider if it was nevertheless excluded under any of the three judge-made exclusions to patent eligibility: “phenomena of nature, mental processes and abstract intellectual concepts.” It focused on the first of these exclusions. The balancing act it said it was performing was to exclude patents for the “basic tools of scientific and technological work” – while at the same time recognising “that too broad an interpretation of this exclusionary principle could eviscerate patent law. For all inventions at some level embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.”

The premise (Page 8) on which SCOTUS came to the conclusion that the patents were invalid was:

“Prometheus’ patents set forth laws of nature—namely, relationships between concentrations of certain metabolites in the blood and the likelihood that a dosage of a thiopurine drug will prove ineffective or cause harm.”

This is a breathtaking extrapolation. Go back up and read Dr. Théoret’s first paragraph. There is a huge variability between people, based on their genetic make up, causing different rates of metabolising the thiopurines they are taking. The relationships are hardly “laws of nature” within the meaning given in earlier SCOTUS decisions referred to in this one. Determining that a particular range of metabolites in the blood for a particular disorder is the goldilocks range is hardly going to pre-empt a “basic tool of scientific and technological work”.

What is a law of nature? One example is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (except maybe neutrinos between Geneva and northern Italy!). I think a definition most scientists could agree on is that it is an hypothesis that has not been disproved by so much experimentation that it is generally agreed to be correct. But remember the scientist’s lament, “a beautiful hypothesis – ruined by an ugly fact.”

SCOTUS justices generally deal with matters concerning the interpretation of the constitution. And a training in and understanding of science is not a prerequisite to being appointed. But a lack of understanding of science, or a wilful overlooking of what a law of nature is to a scientist, has led to this decision. And there is no appeal from here.

And who is the winner? The Mayo Clinic:

Although it is a non-profit organisation, it brings in handsome sums of money and any premium it might have had to pay for the Prometheus diagnostic kits will hardly make what it charges its patients any cheaper.

And the losers?

Prometheus Laboratories will now lose its exclusivity in marketing the diagnostic kits used to carry out the patented method. The patents were due to expire in seven years time, so its investment in commercialising the invention will have to be recouped in competition with suppliers who have contributed nothing to getting the science from the lab to the market place.

But the real losers are Ste-Justine’s hospital (the French language children’s hospital in Montreal – my home town) and the taxpayers of Quebec who fund the public health system that Ste-Justine’s is a part of. They will lose the royalty income stream the patents were generating.

And where does this leave the Myriad Genetics gene patents appeal pending before SCOTUS?

One commentator has speculated that SCOTUS will refer that case back to the appeal court that held the “gene” claims to be valid. But in 2011 SCOTUS referred Mayo v Prometheus back to them – and the CAFC did not change its mind.

Watch this space.

~ Doug Calhoun
IP Mentor

Posted in Development, Early stage science, high tech, Innovation, Patent, proprietary, SciBlogs, Science, technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Farming’s unfashionable, but there’s a simple fix to make it sexy

Posted on March 22, 2012 by

There are huge gains to be made in pastoral farming productivity if the average performers started doing what the top 25% do according to MAF in its Briefing to Incoming Ministers.

That would increase exports by $3 billion a year, just using existing knowledge.

Now, as MAF sees it, we’re missing considerable opportunities. The report says “The problem arises from a complex mix of capabilities, infrastructure, investment, incentives and social factors across a broad range of industry participants.”

If this is shorthand for the fact that average age of sheep and beef farmers is now 58 and rising (see here), and, those very same farmers have continually pushed up the price of land beyond its actual productive value, then MAF’s dead right. Indeed, there’s a demographic time bomb – and as the ANZ bank says in the above article, we’ve lost a generation.

One thing that the MAF BIM doesn’t mention, and to be fair it is probably a bridge too far for a bureaucrat, is that farming ain’t sexy.

This is in spite of the fact that the range of skills – biological, financial, management, (increasingly) IT – that need to be cleverly combined to turn a profit from the land, this and agriculture’s wider story doesn’t resonate with the general public nor with young people.

There is one simple reason.

Farming, the way we do it, doesn’t have a name.

That is, we take sunshine, soil and fresh air and make wonderful protein products. We work in harmony with nature, using all the skills mentioned above, and generally, sustainably, make fantastic raw materials that become desirable food and fibre.

While those in the agriculture industry may be aware of this wider ecosystem approach, others, including overseas consumers, haven’t a clue.

And, as design guru Dorenda Britten says, “you can’t buy into something until you name it.”

New Zealand agriculture’s key comparative advantage is its understanding and utilisation of pastoral production systems. This fantastic transformation of solar energy, the utter underpinning of our economy, is formless and vague.

To the vast majority of Kiwi’s, though agriculture’s stolid, it’s about as sexy as dirt.

But when you realise that once overseas consumers are aware of how NZ produces the majority of its milk, meat and fibre, they are immediately converts to what is effectively “the way you’d farm if you farmed yourself.”

New Zealand Inc needs to wake up to the fact that our farming is much more that a way to produce food. Standing back and looking at big picture, we’re a conceptual ideal.

However, until we name (which is the same as branding) our system, the issues identified by MAF won’t have a hope in hell of being resolved.

Until we own our story (and a brand is merely shorthand for the story) there will be nothing for young people to buy into – or to even consider the possibility of being able to have a fulfilling life by making money by using land wisely.

Now, this may be an innovative leap that a production-oriented mindset finds difficult to conceive.

Nevertheless, to be part and parcel of a modern consumer and young person’s mind we need to reconceive our agriculture as being as much of an ‘experience’ rather than as an item that somehow ends up on your plate.

As soon as we name/brand what we do, we provide ourselves with an entirely different future.

Posted in education, high tech, Innovation, SciBlogs, sustainability, technology, value-added food. processed food | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Healthy challenge in 100 words

Posted on March 21, 2012 by

Hat’s off to Grow Wellington for keeping it simple and sweet, and setting the initial bar low in its ‘Innovating for Health Challenge’.

Anyone with an idea, good, bad or indifferent, only has to submit up to 100 words for a proposition with commercial potential in a healthcare application.

And, when you think about it, if you can’t spark a ‘tell me more’ response in four or five sentences, you might as well head back to the drawing board.

Entries close on March 30, and while the hundred or so already in are mostly from researchers and clinicians across universities, research institutes and district health boards, the competition’s open to anyone across the country.

GW’s sweetens the pot for entrants with free IP management advice, connections with and to entrepreneurs and investors and help in working up a business plan for some of those ideas deemed good enough.

Oh, and the winner gains $50,000 development funding.

Part of the scheme’s virtue (from sticK’s point of view) is that academics sometimes deem ‘business’ as being something they’re not interested in – yet these are the very people that will have the health ideas.

Simply, getting their ideas on the table is an excellent start though, and every submission will receive feedback.

Not many people realise that the Wellington’s region has almost 2000 researchers; with many being health professionals in CRIs, universities, medical school offshoots and clinical trial facilities.

The opportunity to leverage that expertise against promising ideas is one that the region should take. Allowing academics and others from around the country to quickly and easily submit an idea (compared to spending days filling in a funding application) is quite appealing.

Hand-holding at stage two, the feasibility study part, makes sense.

So, a final reminder…..just a hundred words for a good healthy idea.

Posted in Development, Early stage science, high tech, Innovation, SciBlogs, start-up, technology, university | Tagged , | Leave a comment