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Dr Neil Philips, Senior Attorney, Global Intellectual Property Unit, AstraZeneca Plc, spoke on Intellectual Property Tools for the 21st century. Dr Philips said, “Intellectual property is the most basic form of property. Intellectual property rights exist to protect authors, creators and inventors. IPR rewards innovation, may facilitate investment and can be the most important asset of a business. IPRs give limited monopoly for commercialization of a defined technology or artistic work. International treaties have simplified and reduced the cost of obtaining IPR." Intellectual property tools include patents, trademarks, confidential information, copyright and designs, as well as database protection and moral rights. The biotechnology industry has made significant use of these tools especially patents. Bioinformatics represents an interesting challenge for an intellectual property specialist. A rigorous analysis of all intellectual and technical aspects of the relevant biology and computing is required. Aspects may include input material, the analysis tools, algorithms and search systems. The analysis will show where IPR exists and where there are opportunities for obtaining IPR. Genomics also involves complex issues. The gene sequencing initiatives of recent years have led to the filling of many patent applications. Some patent applications relate to large numbers of partial gene sequences of unknown biochemical function. Others relate to full length coding sequences with outline biochemical function. These patent applications raise questions about patentability ie do they meet basic requirements for novelty, inventive step and industrial application? Dr Paula E Stephan, Professor of Economics and Associate Dean School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University spoke on Bioinformatics: Human resource Bottlenecks and Opportunities. Dr Stephan’s research interests focus on careers of scientists and engineers and the process by which knowledge moves across institutional boundaries in the economy. She said, “demand for bioinformatics driven by immense amount of genetic data that is emerging as a consequence of mapping of the human genome as well as immense amount of other types of data that are becoming available. In May 1999, public archives contained about 700 million bases of human genome. In May 2000, the figure was more than 3 billion. Three months later, it was 4 billion.” Demand for personnel (faculty and students from biotechnology) is strong in the US and internationally. According to the Inpharmatica Scientific Director Mark Swindells, “It’s a tight job market…everyone is struggling to find people with the Bioinformatics skills they need. But the pool of scientists holding formal qualifications in both computer science and biology is diminutive.” Dr Stephan's paper quoted Peer Bork – Head of the Comparative Sequence Analysis Group, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany, as saying “professorships in bioinformatics are announced almost biweekly in Germany alone. Despite the current efforts to enable proper training, the shortage of experts will remain a bottleneck for atleast another five years or so.” Dr Stephan’s paper made the following
conclusions regarding demand for personnel in BT/BI:
Opportunities exist for countries with alternative institutional structures as well as with good track records of educating students with strong math and quantitative skills to leapfrog ahead in the area of bioinformatics. Poornima Jairaj, Global Technology
Ventures Ltd, said it is important to see how the financing community views
biotechnology. Technology obsolescence in BT is a lesser risk than in IT,
she felt. While entrepreneurs in this field have to be careful with valuations,
for the end customer, price versus performance is the main issue. The market
must be understood in terms of what other competitors are there. India
is a vast market ready for BT. While there is a range of financing options,
VC funding and government sponsored initiatives are an absolute must in
order to commercialise BT, she said.
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