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Global Governance of Intellectual Property in the 21st Century pp 225–242Cite as

Innovation Cartography and Patentomics: Past, Present and Future

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Abstract

One method for determining investment targets in any business sector is to determine where entities are focusing their development strategies to enhance innovation. One signal that can be used to judge where companies are innovating is publically available patent information. Using patent data is a complex process, but one that has become more viable over the last decade due to the open availability of patents online, and importantly the enhancement in software and hardware tools. This paper looks at the evolution of such tools, using research and development in crops as an example.

Crop development is one element of global food security. It may require access to plant genes data, plant patents and related information. When access to such data is restricted, innovation may stall. There are many hindrances to access, such as economic power, but they also include the legal rights created by patents, copyright and contracts. The mapping of legal rights in the innovation landscape, one that is dominated by patents, is one tool to help understand the scientific directions and investment in the field.

This paper reviews the legal rights mapping in the crop innovation landscape as an example of how patent cartography can aid knowledge of sector directions. Following an introduction, some of the literature on mapping patent data is surveyed. This is followed by a review of the research on mapping legal rights in materials from databases. The fourth part explores the potential of a cartography tool we have developed to enhance our understanding of innovation landscapes. The chapter concludes by drawing together the current state of knowledge on mapping legal rights in the crop innovation landscape.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Follow the Myriad cases in the USA, Australia, and other countries.

  2. 2.

    “Genomics/Genomik (ger.): The scientific study of genomes, using gene mapping, nucleotide sequencing, and other techniques; the branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, and evolution of genomes”.

  3. 3.

    Following the thread of the “omics age’, ‘patentomics’ can be considered to be the systematic study of the structure, function and evolution of a select body of patents. The tools are developing that will allow this to be done in a high throughput and readily accessible way.

  4. 4.

    For example, the Australian Patent Act 1990 (Cth) section 29(4) requires “a patent request in relation to a complete application [to] be in the approved form and accompanied by a complete specification”. Section 40(2) provides:

    A complete specification must:

    1. (a)

      disclose the invention in a manner which is clear enough and complete enough for the invention to be performed by a person skilled in the relevant art; and

      1. (aa)

        disclose the best method known to the applicant of performing the invention; and

    2. (b)

      where it relates to an application for a standard patent—end with a claim or claims defining the invention; and

    3. (c)

      where it relates to an application for an innovation patent—end with at least one and no more than 5 claims defining the invention.

    Patent legislation universally contains the requirement for disclosure of how the patent is to be ‘performed’, i.e. that a person skilled in the art of this area of research would be able to reproduce the patented product or process.

  5. 5.

    Sir Isaac Newton expressed this sentiment in a letter to Robert Hooke dated 5 February 1676: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of giants”. However, the idea of relying on earlier work to make advances had been expressed some centuries prior to Newton.

  6. 6.

    “The anticommons thesis is simple: when too many people own pieces of one thing, nobody can use it. Usually, private ownership creates wealth. But too much ownership has the opposite effect – it leads to wasteful underuse. This is a free market paradox that shows up all across the global economy. If too many owners control a single resource, cooperation breaks down, wealth disappears, and everybody loses. Conceptually, underuse in an anticommons mirrors the familiar problem of overuse in a ‘tragedy of the commons.’ The field of anticommons studies is now well‐established. Over a thousand scholars have detailed examples from across the innovation frontier, including drug patenting, telecom licensing, climate change, compulsory land purchase, oil field unitisation, music and art copyright, and post‐socialist economic transition. Fixing anticommons tragedy is a key challenge for any legal system committed to innovation and economic growth” (Heller 2013, 6).

  7. 7.

    Lyon (2014) provides information on the project and impressive images.

  8. 8.

    This image is now part of the Museum of Modern Art collection in New York (see MOMA Learning 2015).

  9. 9.

    At which time a grant was received from the Government of Canada via Genome Canada and the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI-046).

  10. 10.

    Particular thanks are given to Professor P Krishna for molecular science advice, Dr T Margoni, S Serniwka, N Zeit, M Taylor, V Viswambharan, M Qu, M Frontini, I Iyoha and the other 40+ research assistants active during that period.

  11. 11.

    This due to funding from the University of New England and the programming skills of Dr. Hawlader Al Mamun, University of New England, who wrote the Java to make the Cytoscape relationships available online and set-up the encrypted MySQL database for the patent data.

  12. 12.

    Interested readers should see Perry (2015) for information on how to login and contact the authors.

  13. 13.

    It should be noted that consultation with a molecular biologist in this field was required to get the appropriate search terms.

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  1. Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Kylie Lingard

  2. School of Law, The University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2350, Australia

    Mark Perry

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    Mark Perry

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Lingard, K., Perry, M. (2016). Innovation Cartography and Patentomics: Past, Present and Future. In: Perry, M. (eds) Global Governance of Intellectual Property in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31177-7_13

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