Ideas matter: more training in intellectual property needed to secure economic fruits of research

More training in the generation, management and protection of intellectual property (IP) is needed to protect and nurture Europe’s investment in university start-ups, and deliver on their potential to create jobs and boost economic growth, according to a survey of some of Europe’s leading entrepreneurs.

Almost three quarters of those questioned said IP is playing a significant role in the growth of their companies, attracting investment, protecting against competitors, making them stand out from the crowd and increasing credibility.

However, protecting IP is both expensive and laborious, and more than half of respondents said they were unprepared to deal with the complexities of IP at the point they started their companies.

Given this experience, 71 per cent of respondents said there is a need for more IP training for would-be entrepreneurs and graduate students.

The survey, on ‘The role of IP in Europe’s Technology Start-ups’, was carried out by Science|Business in collaboration with Ideas Matter, a consortium of companies and trade bodies that exists to promote awareness of the importance of innovation and the role that IP plays in  fostering it. As finalists in the Science|Business Academic Enterprise (ACES) awards for university start-ups, the entrepreneurs who took part in the survey represent some of Europe’s leading lights in translating and commercialising publicly-funded research.

Science|Business brought together MEPs, EU officials involved with entrepreneurship programs, IP specialists and research funders with some of the ACES winners, to preview this research and highlight the importance of ensuring IP is a prominent part of the mix in entrepreneurship and training for SMEs.

In short, to promote successful university spin-outs there needs to be better IP training. “IP helps innovation and creativity,” said Thomas Tindermans, Managing Director, Ideas Matter. “Once you understand the importance of IP you need to know how to deal with it,” he told the meeting.

A complex issue for academics and SMEs

Innovative SMEs represent one of the chief routes to get Europe back on a growth path, said Danuta Hübner, MEP. Amongst all policy initiatives the European Commission is putting in place to support small companies IP “presents one the most important challenges,” she said.

Maria Da Graca Carvalho MEP agreed, saying “IP is really a very complex issue for academics and SMEs. “The more you discuss it, the more complex it seems.” Carvalho believes that currently there is not enough training for researchers on this critical subject. “We should keep in mind, we need intellectual property to extract the value from research; scientists need to know about IP, to blend that research with commercial objectives,” she said.

One difficulty in attempting to increase the level of IP training is the shortage of IP specialists. “There are very few degrees in areas related to IP and the knowledge doesn’t flow,” Carvalho noted. “I want to see schools and universities spreading knowledge and teaching about IP.”

The question of how SMEs can be helped with innovation has been at the centre of recent debates in the European Parliament, noted Salvador Sedó i Alabart MEP. One significant advance is the creation of the single European patent. “This is something that will help SMEs,” Sedó said.

Massimo Corsi, European Parliament expert at the European Patent Office agreed with this assessment. Although the fee for registering a single patent is yet to be set, Corsi said, “I really think it will bring down costs.” SMEs will be particularly helped by the new language regime for the unitary patent where in the future no translation will be required. SMEs will also benefit from a compensation scheme to reduce the translations costs in the transition period during which one translation will still be necessary, Corsi said. 

Patent fit 

Smart IP management involves more than learning how to deal with patent offices, believes Quentin Pankhurst, founder and consultant of Endomagnetics Ltd, an ACES-winning company that is developing magnetic nanoparticles as the basis of a new diagnostic system for assessing the stage of development of breast cancers.

In the early years of the company all the focus was on the technology and getting into the clinic, with business development limited to the sole activity of raising money. “I thought that when business people asked me about IP, regulatory pathways and reimbursement they were putting up trick questions, designed to trip me up. But now I know that I should have been asking myself exactly those questions, right from the start,” Pankhurst said.

While Endomagnetics did file two or three patents in the early days, these were “catch-alls” written to encompass as many potential applications of magnetic nanoparticles as possible. This turned out to be a problem in building a specific market Pankhurst said. “There’s a big difference between a business patent and university nice-to-have patents.”

Alexander Wulff, CMO and co-founder of Abeo, which is commercialising a new, flexible system for casting concrete for buildings, agreed that how patents are written is one of the single most important issues for a research-based start-up. “When you are inventing a technology at a university you don’t know what the end product will be, so when you write the patent you don’t know what to protect. This definitely calls for better training in IP,” he said.

Patents are extremely important to commercialisation in the field of regenerative medicine, said Daniela Couto, founder and CEO of Cell2B, an ACES winning company that is developing a treatment for graft-versus-host disease, a condition in which transplanted bone marrow rejects the recipient. “We need patents: if we don’t have them, we don’t have product,” Couto said.

Cell2B’s technology arises from research carried out by Couto and her co-founders at MIT and the Technical University of Lisbon. The company has secured licenses from both institutions. Couto noted that MIT’s system of charging milestone payments pushes companies to implement technologies because if not patent rights can be withdrawn. Both universities agreed a schedule of payments and royalties. “It was less costly to license IP out of a European university, but I think we will get more value in the long run from the MIT licenses,” Couto said.

IP advances commercialisation

The central role of IP in advancing the commercialisation of research and the need to ensure more training in this area has been put at the heart of the European Institute of Technology and Innovation (EIT), as Daria Golebiowska-Tataj, member of the EIT governing board described. With so many different types of institutions and companies, from so many countries, forming the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), through which EIT operates, it was initially very difficult to agree on an IP policy.

“Our thinking was that rather than being prescriptive, we should create a framework and let each KIC develop an IP strategy – each one came up with a different model, and they are evolving,” Golebiowska-Tataj said.

Given the evident need for IP training, as expressed by ACES winners, there is the question of how and when this should take place. Some universities are hesitant. It can be difficult for universities to train people in start-ups, since this may be perceived as a subsidy to a commercial company.

Brian More, Director of IP Services at Coventry University said IP training should start at least at undergraduate level. “You’ve got to teach people early; IP is really important to company growth. Companies survive longer when people are trained in IP,” More said. 

A wealth of resources available online provides basic information and training to help entrepreneurs at all levels.

Mario Campolargo noted that there are many local initiatives around university generated IP and IP training across the EU. “We need to learn lessons from places where things work well,” he said.  

“A new Commission initiative, Startup Europe, aims to link innovation ecosystems, pulling in venture capitalists, accelerators, crowd-funding bodies and start-ups, to make links and learn from each other,” Campolargo said.