Green Growth National Innovation Strategies IP

CambridgeIP

Economics of Green Growth:
National Innovation Strategies
& IP
WIPO Forum on IP & Green Growth
Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Quentin Tannock, LLB (Hons), LLM (Cantab)
CambridgeIP: Chairman, Founder

© 2010 CambridgeIP. All rights reserved

Green Growth: National Innovation Strategies & IP

 Accelerating Green Growth is an urgent priority. Technologies and
business models are complex, and there are many competing
interests that need to be balanced.

 Overall, the „time to market‟ for Green innovations is too long & we
should explore a range of acceleration options

 IP-based evidence and analysis can inform Green Growth National
Innovation strategies
 Understanding IP-based trends
 Improved understandings of technology-market systems
 Identification of areas where more support or special treatment may be required
 Identification of key participants / owners of technologies / sources of
technology
 Identification of networks of experts to improve innovation deployments

 WIPO and national Patent Offices have a role to play and can make
2 significant contributions © 20010 Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd. All rights reserved

Contents

• Green context: Urgency, Complexity, Inter-dependency
• Policy: Sample Impacts on Innovation rates & IP activity
• National Innovation Strategies & IP
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• Appendix

3

Context: Public perception - December 2009 protest
against climate change

4

Context: Public Perception - March 2006 protest against
Clean Technology (Wind)

Source http://www.auchencorth.org.uk/images/wicker_turbine.jpg

5

Context: Adoption, Deployment, Integration Challenges

• Diversity & Integration challenges
– Green Sectors and Value Chains are diverse, requiring
diverse treatment
– Many Green solutions require technology integration &
inter-operability
• Accelerating deployment of existing Green
technologies
– Our research shows that it takes between 19 to 30
years for top cited low carbon technologies to reach
the mass adoption phase (CambridgeIP, Chatham
House: 2009)
Wind Energy: Composition by Technology Components

– Some technologies, and business models, are „young‟ 7 ,000
and Application Areas

and consequently relatively fragile
6,000
5,000
4,000

• Commercial confidence is lacking: Increases the positive impact of 3,000
2,000
public procurements & market guarantees (like Feed In Tariffs) 1 ,000
0
• Technology transfer „leading practice‟ and standard terms are often

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not yet established (what is „fair and reasonable‟ is not yet known)

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• In some sub-sectors there is a fear of patent litigation

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© 2009

• International dimensions
There are significant overlaps
– Technology supply and demand is global between some of these sub-
– E.g. Even where technology is not internationally spaces: revealing patents with
created, it is internationally deployed usually with local multiple or systems-level claims
© 20010 Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd. All rights reserved
6
distribution/technology partners

Contents

• Conclusions
• Appendix

7

Impact of international deals: Impact of Montreal Protocol
on medical inhaler industry (1)

• Aside from Kyoto, the Montreal Protocol on CFCs was
probably the highest impact international climate change
deal done
• There was massive industry impact & behavioral change
– To choose just one example in the Health Sector, the CFC ban
impacted many of the inhaler industry‟s key players
– We identified two broad strategies for „inhaler industry‟
adaptation to the Montreal Protocol
• pMDI space innovations: innovation in propellant formulations leading to
increased propellants-focused pMDI patents
• Moving out of pMDIs: A move into Dry Powder Inhalers, essentially
„substituting‟ the need for a propellant
– See the next slide for patent trends in these 2 areas

© 2010 CambridgeIP Ltd. All rights reserved.
8

Impact of Montreal Protocol on medical inhaler industry (2)

• The 1987 Montreal Protocol introduced a range of control measures
for the production and use of CFCs
• This had a major impact on the inhaler industry overall, and pMDI
manufacturers in particular
• Two strategies emerged to deal with this market development,
resulting in accelerated patenting

pMDI space innovations in propellants based on Moving out of pMDIs: A number of companies moved
the 2 HFAs that were allowed to be used (HFA 134a & out of pMDIs and into Dry Powder Inhalers
227)

9

Policy works. Patenting has generally grown with
deployment rate

Wind Solar PV
Annual PV shipments
25000 Annual Wind shipments 1600 4500 1600
Annual patents

Annual PV shipments (MWp)
Annual patents 4000 1400
1400
3500
Additional installed capacity (MW)

Patent filings
20000 1200
1200
3000

Patent filings
1000
15000 1000 2500
800
800 2000
600
10000 1500
600
1000 400
400
5000 500 200
200 0 0
0 0 6
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10

Contents

– Benchmarking & informing: Patents as Indicators, informing
national strategies
– Accelerating & enabling more effective IP based knowledge
transfer
– The central role of WIPO and national Patent Offices in
innovation systems and strategy deployments
• Conclusions
• Appendix

11

Chatham House and CambridgeIP have developed a patent
database focused on six Low Carbon energy technologies
A recently completed patent landscaping research effort by CambridgeIP and
Chatham House has sought to identify:
Facts on the ground – to move beyond myths and to practical solutions
Building blocks for technology transfer practices in the low-carbon energy space

1. Biomass to Electricity
Chatham House and CambridgeIP
have developed a unique collection
2. Carbon Capture
of 57,000 patents and related 3. Cleaner Coal
analyses focused on 6 areas of 4. Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST)
energy technology 5. Solar PV
6. Wind

Following the patent landscaping exercise, Ilien Iliev of CambridgeIP
co-authored a report with Bernice Lee and Felix Preston of Chatham
House: Who Owns Our Low Carbon Future?
Full report available for download at Chatham House‟s website:
www.chathamhouse.org.uk

12

Informing national strategies: Geographical origins of
assignees indicate innovation strengths & capacities (1)

• Aside from China, patent assignees are predominantly from
OECD economies

Netherlands
100%
90% France
80%
% of all patent filings

Denmark
70%
60% Canada
50% United Kingdom
40%
Republic of Korea
30%
20% China
10%
Germany
0%
Biomass Cleaner Carbon CSP PV Wind Japan
Coal Capture
USA

13

Informing national strategies: Geographical origins of
assignees indicate innovation strengths & capacities (2)

• E.g. Note USA Carbon Capture strengths

14

Informing national strategies: Decomposing patent filings into
technology solutions provides information on technology trends

• Decomposing
technology sector
trends into
underlying solutions
provides valuable
information
• PV: Note the
relatively recent rise
in Organic &
Nanotech
approaches

15

Informing national strategies: Geographical location of global
patent filings provides an indication of global technology
markets

• The USA generates much Carbon Capture technology,
the markets for which are local and extra-local

16

International cooperation & Technology transfer

Transfer of wind power technologies from Annex I to non-Annex I countries: 1988-2007
OECD 2009. OECD Project on Environmental Policy and Technological Innovation

17

International dimension: R&D collaborations

• Unsurprisingly, national level collaborations dominate
• Multi-national and National corporations account for over half of all
collaborations
18

IP analysis provides information on types of player: The
public sector is a key actor, and its role is likely to expand
• Public-institution owned IP may be the easiest point at which we
can implement innovative licensing practices Unknown
100%
90% University
80%
SME
70%
Patent filings

60% Public
50%
40% Other
30%
20% National
10% Corporation
Multinational
0%
Average Biomass Cleaner Carbon CSP PV Wind
of all Coal Capture
fields Universities own directly a relatively small proportion
of total patents
The „expanded patent footprint‟ is likely to be much
higher: licensed tech & spin-offs

19

IP analysis informs understanding market-technology spaces:
Nanotech example

CambridgeIP research reveals:
• Higher inter-relation between patents in nano-field
– Higher patent forward citation rates for patents relative to forward citation rates observed elsewhere
– Rising strength of China: Rise in China patenting rates (accompanied by acquisitions of companies and
technologies by Chinese companies)
– Russia: Russian nanotechnology developments are often be overlooked in the English speaking world. Many
clients have little or no exposure to patent and non-patent literature in Cyrillic. The role of RusNano?
• Patenting rates slow down from 2004 in some nanotechnology sub-spaces, in part
driven by:
– Delays in patent filings (perhaps due to „time to market‟ and other considerations)
– Fewer nano patents granted: Increased sophistication and rigor of the nano-patent examination process
– Lower levels of VC investment: end of the honeymoon?

• Multiple & varied technology areas with inter-dependencies and growing
number of applications

1996: A relatively 2006: An „explosion‟ of
small number of activity across an ever-
IPCs is associated increasing array of
with the industrial applications: no
nanotechnology single „core area can be
field discerned: indicative of a
„raft‟ or a „platform‟
technology entering
maturity

20

Example of a national level, technology focused, IP audit:
UK nanotechnology patent audit
Client Profile
Senior executives from a publically funded organisation approached CambridgeIP for assistance in mapping a broad section of the UK
nanotechnology space

Business Situation
• A key driver was the need to inform our clients‟ strategy in this complex and patent intensive space
• Our remit was to assist client executives develop a clear understanding of the existing landscape, identify areas of relative strength &
weakness and existing R&D collaborations, analyse trends and provide statistical information & benchmarking data for use in business
planning and stakeholder reports

Our Approach

• Working with CambridgeIP and senior industry experts we developed and implemented a complex patent search strategy
• Results were analysed using our proprietary tools and methods and a focus area for deep analysis was identified
• A workshop was conducted for client executives with our internal experts, assisting interpretation and dissemination of findings

Results and Benefits

• Identification of fundamental technologies and key actors • Insights into corporate R&D collaborations - identiifying key players in the
• Identification of areas of strength together with technologies applicable to patent space, together with their overlapping relationships
multiple sectors of application for future focus by our client • Independent and fact-based assessments of the client organisations
• Understanding of recent M&A activity with significant impacts on the impact on UK IP assets, valuable in stakeholder reporting
ownership of the UK‟s nanotechnology IP assets

Contents

national strategies
transfer
• Conclusions
• Appendix

22

Accelerate: Patent pools, cross-licensing & standards

• Pooling, cross-licensing & standards
arrangements can accelerate
technology innovation and diffusion
through, e.g.: Telecoms: European Telcoms Standards Institute

– Inter-operability of components
– Non-duplication of R&D efforts
– Decreased risk of litigation
– Broadening users and uses results in Medical Devices: Continua Health Alliance
unexpected and novel uses of technology
• Note: There are many many risks
associated with these mechanisms
Health: UNITAID patent pool

23

Accelerate: Pooling, Cross-licensing & Standards for
Green Tech – what next?

• Identify candidate areas for pooling / cross-licensing agreements
– Likely features: Increasing technical & patent complexity, litigation rates, relatively high speed of
technology „life cycle‟ (past examples – telecoms & semiconductor sectors)
– PV: e.g. underlying technologies for PV production, business models similar to semi-conductors
sector
– Cleaner Coal: e.g. high-end IGCC technology,
– Carbon Capture: e.g. Carbon separation processes – around broad, fundamental technologies
(e.g. enzymes-based carbon capture)

• Identify candidate areas for standards agreements
– Likely features: Increasing technical complexity, diversity of markets and users, requirements for
inter-operability (past examples – telecoms & semiconductor sectors)
– Wind: e.g. inter-changeability of components – gear/transmission, software systems, integration
with grid
– Smartgrid: e.g. communications protocols/software for smartmeters, hardware

• Confirm there is a „critical mass‟ of willing participants?
– See next slide for some of the drivers for company participation
– Participants include: Public sector: Universities, Research institutes, public sector buyers,
SMEs; Private sector: Procurement strategies (housing builders, utilities), SMEs, Multinationals
with compatible IP strategies, other industry technology standards bodies
© 2010 Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd. All rights reserved.
24

Accelerate: Why do companies enter cross-licensing,
pooling & standards arrangements?

Considerations Rationale Examples
Remain a In a rapidly changing industry: remain at Motorola: semi-conductor cross-licensing
the head of technology change Nokia: licensing of technology to Siemens
technology leader
Avoid litigation Low-cost/reasonable royalties for use of Motorola: non-discriminatory/blanket 5-year
technology: cheaper to license than to risk renewable agreements to both competitors and
(defensive and litigation others
offensive)
Accelerate Expose your technology to greater Nokia: licensing of technology to Siemens
number/type of users
innovation
Revenue generationUnilateral licensing out of key IP can Motorola: semi-conductor licensing was
generate significant revenues generating $50mln p.a. in 1990s
IBM: licensing out of IP that’s not being used:
100s $mln p.a.
Protect value chain Meet challenge to leadership outside of Nokia licensing of S60 platform to counter
industry – retain leadership of the Windows Mobile entry threat
against big outsider industry Symbian Foundation: royalty-free licensing
entrants model to protect against Google Android & Apple
‘Increasing the pie’ Change model to redefine the market Revenue sources for Smartphones are changing
boundaries & increase services accessible from calls to data and content – even payment
on back of platform services (e.g. Visa mobile payments solutions)

© 2010 Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd. All rights reserved.
25

Accelerate: Some of my suggestions – „low hanging fruit‟

• Invest in developing model contracts for R&D collaboration, IP
acquisition and licensing
– Transactional costs are reduced when parties can work from standard model
templates, negotiations start from a fair and well-understood basis
– A good example are the „Lambert‟ Agreements implemented by the UK
government for University/Industry R&D collaborations
• Establish databases on licensing terms & leading practice
– Establish benchmarks, encourage transparency & standardisation, share
leading practices
– Organisations like WIPO might play a role, and licensing terms could be
published in the database
• Expand ‘Green fast-track’ Patent Office initiatives
– E.g. UK IPO‟s „fast track for Green patents initiative: See my Blog article on this
topic here - www.cambridgeip.com/blog/archives/102.html
• Capitalize on the existing, massive, global technology library
represented by over 50 million patent documents – it‟s currently
under-utilised
– Sectoral mapping & multi-ontology database creation
26 – Technology mapping: IP Landscapes ®© 2010 Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd. All rights reserved

Accelerate: Some of my suggestions – „higher fruit‟

• Encourage private sector investment by supporting
the creation of investment „platforms‟
– E.g. Low Carbon Investment Indices with major bank
participation
• Manage risk through the establishment of insurance
options
– E.g. Insurance to manage IP litigation risk in key technology-
market sectors
• Adopt Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
measures to set „fair and reasonable‟ (FRAND) licence
terms
– E.g. Mediation, Expert Determination, Arbitration

27

Enable: Expertise is required

• Even in mature, well-understood, market-technology
sectors there is a need for expertise to adapt & deploy
technologies
• Challenge: Identify and engage with willing experts
 IP data can help identify most the prolific and most networked
experts in technology spaces
 Platforms like Boliven.com house Innovation NetworksTM where
experts are grouped (and group themselves)

Network analysis
Visualising collaborations revealed
in a 10,000+ patent dataset in an
area of strategic focus Blue:
Inventor
28
Red: Owner

Contents

national strategies
transfer
• Conclusions
• Appendix

29

The central role of WIPO and national Patent Offices

 Maintaining the global patent library & continuing to improve accessibility:
E.g.
 Improved language translations
 Thematic Patent landscapes, showcasing particular technology spaces and
national patent assets
 E.g. Development Agenda Project DA_19_30_31_01 (“Developing tools for Access to
Patent Information” WIPO project document CDIP/4/6), concerns „Patent Landscape
reports in various fields of technology, including Public Health, Climate
Change/Environment/Energy, Food and Agriculture‟.
 Measures to support green patent filings
 E.g. UKIPO „Green Track‟; USA Accelerated Examination: See my Blog Article on
this topic here - www.cambridgeip.com/blog/archives/102.html
 Facilitating international co-operation in Green IP spaces
 E.g. Coordinating with FAO, WHO, UNCTAD, UNCSTD and other international
organisational stakeholders
• Is other WIPO/PO support to Green innovation deployment possible?
• E.g. Facilitating development of Green IP Licensing and Standards regimes?
Facilitating the development and promotion of model R&D and licensing
contracts for selected Green technology sectors?
• E.g. Assisting establish inter-national patent pools and patent funds? (See for
example the proposed „SEE-IFA Cross border Patent and License Fund‟ proposed
30 for South East Europe in an EU-funded project) © 20010 Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd. All rights reserved

Contents

• Conclusions
• Appendix
– OECD Green Growth Strategy overview
– USA Innovation Strategy overview
– OECD National Innovation Systems review overview
– Diversity of Green Energy Sectors
– Notes on WTO,TRIPS & UNFCCC provisions
– Stern Review: IP related extracts
– Case study: Licensing regime options
– Contact us

31

Green Growth: National Innovation Strategies & IP

 IP-based evidence and analysis can inform National Innovation
strategies
 Understanding IP-based trends
 Improved understandings of technology-market systems
 Identification of areas where more support or special treatment may be required
 Identification of key participants / owners of technologies / sources of
technology
 Identification of networks of experts to improve innovation deployments

 Overall, the „time to market‟ for Green innovations is too long & we
should explore a range of acceleration options

 WIPO and national Patent Offices have a role to play and can make
significant contributions

감사합니다
32

Our contact details

Ilian Iliev
Quentin Tannock
(CEO and Founder)
(Chairman and Founder)
ilian.iliev@cambridgeip.com
quentin.tannock@cambridgeip.com
GSM: +44-077-863-73965
GSM: +44-077-8621-0305

Internet Resources
Corporate Office
Website: www.cambridgeip.com
www.boliven.com
Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd
Blog: www.cambridgeip.com/blog
8a King‟s Parade, Cambridge
CB2 1SJ, United Kingdom
Sign-up for our Free Newsletter
UK: +44 (0) 1223 370 098
on our Home Page
Fax: +44 (0) 1223 370 040

33 © 2010 CambridgeIP. All rights reserved

Contents

• Conclusions
• Appendix
– OECD National Innovation Systems review overview
– Notes on WTO,TRIPS & UNFCCC provisions
– Contact us

34

Acknowledgements

• CambridgeIP
– The entire team but especially contributions
by my colleagues, Ilian Iliev (Energy) and
Arthur Lallement (Inhaler Devices)

• Chatham House
– Bernice Lee and Felix Preston
• Read the Chatham House / CambridgeIP report:
Who Owns Our Low Carbon Future? Intellectual
Property and Energy Technologies (download from
www.chathamhouse.org.uk)

35

Contents

• Appendix
– Note on WTO and TRIPS
– UNFCCC provisions
– Contact us

36

OECD Green Growth Strategy Overview

37

USA National Innovation Strategy overview

38

Diverse Green Energy Focus Areas

Wind Energy Nano Devices
Fuel Cells
Systems & Materials

Advanced
GeoThermal
Biomass Refrigeration
Energy
Clean Coal Systems
Photovoltaic & Carbon Capture
Component CO2-EOR Refineries,
Technologies Power Gen,
Marine
Co-Gen.
Concentrated Transport
Consortia &
Solar & Other
Smart Research
Energy Storage
Grid Alliances
Systems © 2010 CambridgeIP. All rights reserved
39

National Innovation Systems: OECD review

• OECD is undertaking a review of national innovation systems
– OECD view of innovation systems: A flow of knowledge > In various forms
(e.g. research collaborations, patent licenses, equipment sales, etc) > Between
various types of actors (e.g. research institutes, corporations) > Acknowledging
the role of „clusters‟, groupings of actors linked to particular localities (e.g. the
high-tech cluster in Cambridge UK)
• Need to acknowledge Patent Offices as actors in national and international innovation systems
– „Oslo Manual‟ based surveys concentrate on manufacturing and services
innovation at the corporate level, focusing on „technologically new or improved
products and processes (or TTP) in the mid-1990s. Impact (i.e. results) and
inputs are assessed.
• Need to acknowledge non-explicit elements of systems
– Tacit knowledge exchange mechanisms: E.g. trade secrets, non-
patented innovations, education
– Human Resources: Requirements for human expertise to interpret and
deliver most technology systems

40

WTO & TRIPS

• Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
– Uruguay Round of negotiations (1986 – 1994), Patents continue
to be discussed in the Doha Round (2001 - )
– An attempt to standardise rights protection and dispute
resolution, with minimum reciprocal levels of IPR protection
• National Treatment, Most Favoured Nation Treatment
• 20 year term of patent protection
• Reinforces Paris and Berne Conventions on IP
– Provision for compulsory licenses where attempts at achieving
reasonable commercial terms have failed over a reasonable
period of time (Article 31)
– Requires developed countries to provide incentives to their
companies to transfer technology to least-developed countries
– Controversy over public health & access to medicines

41

UNFCC Provisions (1)

• Article 4.1 (c)
– All Parties, taking into account their common but differentiated
responsibilities and their specific national and regional
development priorities, objectives and circumstances, shall:
– “Promote and cooperate in the development, application and
diffusion, including transfer, of technologies, practices and
processes that control, reduce or prevent anthropogenic
emissions of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal
Protocol in all relevant sectors, including the energy, transport,
industry, forestry and waste management sectors”

42

UNFCC provisions (2)

• Article 4.5
– “The developed countries and other developed countries included in
Annex II shall take all practicable steps to promote, facilitate and
finance, as appropriate, the transfer of or access to environmentally
sound technologies and know-how to other Parties, particularly
developing country Parties, to enable them to implement the provisions
of the Convention.”...
• Article 4.7
– “The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively
implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the
effective implementation by developed country Parties of their
commitments related to financial resources and transfer of
technology...”

43

Stern Review: Chapter 16, page 351 (a)

• Information is a public good. Once new information has been created, it is virtually
costless to pass on. This means that an individual company may be unable to capture
the full economic benefit of its investment in innovation. These knowledge
externalities (or spillovers) from technological development will tend to limit
innovation.
• There are two types of policy response to spillovers. The first is the enforcement of
private property rights through patenting and other forms of protection for the
innovator. This is likely to be more useful for individual products than for
breakthroughs in processes or know-how, or in basic science. The disadvantage of
rigid patent protection is that it may slow the process of innovation, by preventing
competing firms from building on each others‟ progress. Designing intellectual
property systems becomes especially difficult in fields where the research process is
cumulative, as in information technology.
• Innovation often builds on a number of existing ideas. Strong protection for the
innovators of first generation products can easily be counterproductive if it limits
access to necessary knowledge or research tools for follow-on innovators, or allows
patenting to be used as a strategic barrier to potential competitors. Transaction
costs, the equity implications of giving firms monopoly rights (and profits) and further
barriers such as regulation may prevent the use of property rights as the sole
incentive to innovate. Also much of value may be in tacit knowledge („know-how‟ and
„gardeners‟ craft‟) rather than patentable ideas and techniques.

44

Stern Review: Chapter 16, page 351 (b)

• Another broad category of support is direct government funding of innovation,
particularly at the level of basic science. This can take many forms, such as funding
university research, tax breaks and ensuring a supply of trained scientists.
• Significant cross-border spillovers and a globalised market for most technologies offer
an incentive for countries to free-ride on others who incur the learning cost and then
simply import the technology at a later date9. The basic scientific and technical
knowledge created by a public R&D programme in one country can spillover to other
countries with the capacity to utilise this progress. While some of the leaning by
doing will be captured in local skills and within local firms, this may not be enough to
justify the learning costs incurred nationally.
• International patent arrangements, such as the Trade Related International Property
Rights agreement (TRIPs10), provides some protection, but intellectual property
rights can be hard to enforce internationally. Knowledge is cheap to copy if not
embodied in human capital, physical capital or networks, so R&D spillovers are
potentially large. A country that introduces a deployment support mechanism and
successfully reduces the cost of that technology also delivers benefits to other
countries. Intellectual property right issues are discussed in more detail in Section
23.4.
• International co-operation can also help to address this by supporting formal or
informal reciprocity between RD&D programmes. This is explored in Chapter 24.

45

Stern Review: Chapter 24, page 10

• In many cases intellectual property rights are not the key barrier to transfer of
technology.
• Within international debates on climate change there has been a particular focus on
the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) as a barrier to the international diffusion
of technologies. In principle, patents that protect IPR and reward the innovator are
important as they provide an incentive to invest in developing new products. Weak
IPR may deter domestic firms in developing countries from purchasing technologies
as their competitors may be able to copy them without paying. Companies with
advanced technologies often cite insufficient IPR protection in developing countries
as a barrier to technology transfer, and suggest stronger protection, for example by
full implementation of the TRIPs agreement, would help them deploy advanced
technologies. Increasing the incentives for mitigation (for example by introducing a
carbon price) increases the value of patents for low-carbon technologies and acts as
a stimulus to investment in innovation in this area. The benefits of having an
intellectual property (IP) regime do not imply that such rights should be increased
without limit, especially if they reduce the beneficial effects of product market
competition.
• Patents can also be seen as creating a short-term monopoly and thus limiting
efficient diffusion whilst the owner enjoys monopoly rents

46

Case Study: Licensing Regime Options for commercial client

Client Profile
A Fortune 500 medical devices company asked us to help identify a transition strategy to help move an industry with a highly
proprietary and litigious culture toward a more open cross-licensing approach

Business Situation
• The client was concerned that R&D resources were invested into inventing around other incumbents, rather than on innovations to meet end-
user needs. As a result key market niches remain unexplored, whilst regulatory pressure increased
• Key questions posed by our client were:
• evidence that the industry is ripe for change?
• What are the Pro‟s and con‟s for moving to a cross-licensing approach, based on other industry experience?
• What scenarios can be identified, resulting from a move to a cross-licensing regime?
• How to initiate change toward a cross-licensing regime?

Our Approach Results and Benefits
• We analysed patent related activity in the client industry and a
comparator industry to reveal innovation trends, providing empirical
evidence of the gap in innovativeness and increasing litigation risk
in the client‟s space.
• A series of interviews with experts and senior executives from the
client‟s and comparator industries helped relate the risks and • Our results showed the take-off in innovation rates in the
benefits of moving to a cross-licensing approach. comparator industry after the introduction of industry-wide
licensing agreements.
• We developed a „checklist‟ of indicators for pressures of change, as
well as strategic considerations that support a move towards a • We also compared patent citation rates and showed an increasing
cross-licensing & standardisation regime. inter-relatedness of technology in the clients space relative to the
comparator space: increasing litigation risk in the absence of
• We also developed a sequencing strategy aimed at preserving our licensing agreements
clients industry leadership and protect traditional revenue sources
during transition to the new regime. • Our client is using our outputs to build internal and external
stakeholder support for the proposed cross-licensing regime


Our contact details

Ilian Iliev
Quentin Tannock
(CEO and Founder)
(Chairman and Founder)
ilian.iliev@cambridgeip.com
quentin.tannock@cambridgeip.com
GSM: +44-077-863-73965
GSM: +44-077-8621-0305

Internet Resources
Corporate Office
Website: www.cambridgeip.com
www.boliven.com
Cambridge Intellectual Property Ltd
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Green Growth National Innovation Strategies IP

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