LES BENELUX

NEWSLETTER

THIRTY SECOND ISSUE - DECEMBER 2000

This quarterly newsletter is written specifically for LES Benelux members and others with a professional or business interest in all aspects of technology transfer and the licen-sing of intellectual property. Further copies are available on request. Unless indicated as author's copyright and subject to acknowledgement of the Society, all material may be used freely in other publications. Unless otherwise agreed, acceptance of any submission for publication in this Newsletter is on the understanding that the author also consents to publication in the same or edited form on the LES Europe site at http://www.les-europe.org/.
Editorial insert, advertising enquiries and contributions should be addressed to Saskia van Dijk-Struyk, c/o LES Benelux, Lodewijk de Vromestraat 25, NL-3962 VG Wijk bij Duurstede, phone/fax +31 343 575 397; e-mail info@benelux.les-europe.org

Dear Members,

The year 2000 has been a very special and busy year for our society. The organization of the LES International Conference in Amsterdam was really the crowning glory on the work of LES Benelux in the last ten years. However, life has to go on and LES Benelux has made its plans for the upcoming year 2001. At the AGM held on 15 November 2000, which was combined with a very-well attended and lively full-day topic meeting on University-Industry-Liaison, the members elected the following board for the year 2001: Nigel Wagstaff (president); Bruno Vandermeulen (President-elect); Emma van Oosterom (Vice-President); Gregor Vos (Secretary); Frans van Voorst (Treasurer); Dennys Watson (Membership Secretary); Ariane Bird, Anne De Roo and Dirk Groenewegen (Program Committee). We also said goodbye to three board members after they served our society long and extremely well: Ruprecht Hermans, past-president LES Benelux, Wil van der Voorde, membership secretary for 10 years and Thomas Vinje who was one of the driving forces in our Program Committee. Although they have ''officially left'', we asked all three to stay on as ''advisors'' to the new board and we expect they will do so as actively as they were before.

The proposed topics and meeting dates for the year 2001 include a full day meeting with members of the European Commission in Brussels and a full day meeting on biotechnology. The first upcoming meeting will be on Wednesday 21 February 2001 about "Legal and Licensing Issues for Business Method Patents".
LES Benelux also plans to organize a repetition of its successful "Licensing Course" during the year 2001.

Although LES Benelux' financial situation was already very healthy, the Amsterdam Conference has supplied us with some extra funds. These funds will be spent on an increase of quality and quantity of our membership by educational and stimulus efforts to students, such as grants and awards for written work and studies on IPR and licensing, reduced fees for membership and meetings and contributions to libraries. We will also spend money on improving quality and services to our members by re-styling our newsletter, updating the LES Benelux brochure and extending the LES Benelux web site by adding more facilities for members, such as a searchable LES Benelux member database and, finally, we will also establish a special fund for organizing future international conferences. Benelux members having proposals for projects fitting into the above mentioned frame for funds, are requested to contact me as soon as possible.

It was a pleasant, but also a very busy time as President of LES Benelux. Needless to say that I have tremendously enjoyed it. I would like to say ''thank you'' to those I met, spoke and worked with. I wish the new President, Nigel Wagstaff, a same enjoyable period as I had and I hope to be able to assist him as an active member of the board per January 2001.

Emma van Oosterom
President LES Benelux
e-mail: Vanoosterom@oos.eur.nl

New members

LES Benelux has been pleased to welcome the following new members to the Society:

• Johan P.E. Brants, De Clercq, Brants & Partners Sint -Martens-Latem (B);
• Geoffrey H. Clarke, Eaton BV, Schiphol-Rijk (NL);
• Roger Cox, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Beerse (B);
• Bob Crouwel, KPMG, Amstelveen (NL);
• Dick Th.C.J.A. van Engelen, Stibbe Simont Monahan, Amsterdam (NL);
• Sanderijn van Gorp, CMS Derks Star Busmann, Utrecht (NL);
• Valentijn Kerklaan, KPMG, Amstelveen (NL);
• Margriet Kramer, KPMG, Amstelveen (NL)
• Jean-Louis Morin, Shell International, Rijswijk (NL);
• Barbara P. Peroni, Proctor & Gamble, Strombeek-Bever (B);
• Ruud J. Peters, Philips Corporate Intellectual Property, Eindhoven (NL);
• Dirk Pollet, Galapagos Genomics, Mechelen (B);
• Luc Quaghebeur, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Beerse (B);
• Karin G. Retzer, Morrison & Foerster, Brussels (B);
• Geert van Rijt, KPMG, Amstelveen (NL);
• Diederik Stols, Allen & Overy, Amsterdam (NL);
• Gerard N.M.J. Verschuren, Eindhoven University, Eindhoven (NL);

Counting your chickens before they're hatched

It was recently reported that a US biotechnology company plans to employ genetic engineering techniques to create a strain of chickens with extra large breasts (to yield more meat). The firm, AviGenics of Athens, Georgia, has also come up with a novel method of monitoring and regulating proliferation of its genetically modified (GM) birds once they are sold to breeders.

Research into avian transgenesis - a technique involving the insertion of foreign genes into the DNA of birds in such a way that the genes are passed down to the birds' offspring - has thus far focussed mainly on the use of birds as 'bioreactors'. By adding specific human genes into the DNA of chickens, companies such as AviGenics hope to be able to turn the poultry into living drugs factories. Human therapeutic proteins produced within transgenic chickens would be recovered from the whites of eggs laid by these specially modified birds. Drugs produced in this manner could be used to treat a wide range of human disorders. However, in addition to the established 'pharmaceutical' approach, AviGenics also plans to harness transgenic technology to develop poultry with improved agronomic traits. Through genetic modification, it should be possible to produce chickens with improved disease resistance, faster growth rates and, of course, bigger breasts.

The GM birds would obviously be extremely attractive to poultry breeds and, in order to control their proliferation and ensure that only licensed breeders would be able to use these valuable chickens, AviGenics is developing a novel 'genetic encryption' method. A unique sequence of DNA would be engineered and inserted into the chicken genome, thereby indelibly marking the birds as originating from AviGenics. Since the unique sequence would be passed down to any offspring of the GM chickens, it would also mark the birds of future generations. This would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for unlicensed breeders to rear the GM fowl undetected.

It remains to be seen how the public will react to the appearance of GM meat on the supermarket shelves. Given the continuing adverse publicity surrounding GM crops, it seems unlikely that GM poultry products will escape the protests.

Business method patents: danger or challenge?

For a long time, it was assumed that a patent was meant to grant protection for technical inventions. For example, the invention of a new machine or a new medicine. Times would seem to have changed owing to the increasing number of business method patents (patents on corporate processes, methods of doing business).

Patents have already been granted in the United States for a number of years for inventions which are hardly of a technical nature or which are not of a technical nature at all. These are the patents that are commonly referred to as "business method patents". An example of one such patent is that granted to the Signature Financial Group for a system of pooling investment funds by smaller banks for the purpose of saving costs and obtaining tax advantages. Signature successfully invoked this patent against a competitor using the same kind of system. Many business method patents relate to systems for doing business on the Internet. A well-known example is the patent granted in the United States to the Internet company, Amazon.com, for the "one click" ordering of goods via the Internet. This patent was also success-fully invoked against competitors.

There are already some business method patents in Europe. Citibank AG has been granted a patent for the computerized trade in warrants. Whether the grant of patents of this type is permitted under the European Patent Convention is, however, still open to question. Various of Citibank's competitors have appealed to the European Patent Office against the grant of the patent. The increasing number of business method patents means that companies who have never dealt with patents before, will have to ask themselves firstly whether they are infringing competitors' business method patents and secondly whether they can, or indeed should, apply for such patents themselves. Since many of the already existing business method patents relate to the Internet, it would be unwise not to look further than the Netherlands or Europe when making such a decision.

Domain Names

The relevance of domain names in today's society can hardly be underestimated. In a very short period of time domain names have become important indicators of identity on the internet for commercial, institutional as well as ideological entities. The development of the general system that governs the allocation of domain names has been dramatic. However, in the near future the overall domain name system as well as the national regulations of the national registrars in the Netherlands and in Belgium are going to change. On an international level, new generic Top Level Domains (the well-known existing ones are .com, .net, .org etc.) are expected to be introduced. The European Commission has made plans to introduce a new ''.eu'' Top Level Domain. In the Netherlands most formal requirements have been abolished: it is now also possible to register 'personal domain names', i.e. domain names for private persons. Belgium's current registration procedure is very protective of trademarks and trade names. However, due to the proposed changes in the Belgian registration system, which are likely to enter into effect very soon, third parties might register a company or organization's names or trademarks, if these have not been registered yet. More information about these changes can be found at many sites at the internet; an example of one of these sites is www.nautadutilh.com

LES Benelux Topic Meeting on 27 September 2000

The meeting was held at the Brussels Holiday Inn and attracted more than 85 participants coming from Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Barry Quest (UK) introduced the speakers, who had been selected for their particular knowledge and contribution to licensing via the Internet. The first two speakers represented start-up companies, who base their activities on a similar but unique and very innovative business model: a one-stop registration, search and licensing tool to providers of IPR's on one hand and users of IPR's on the other hand. The third speaker confronted this emerging type of business with some legal questions and challenged the speakers with some daring questions.

Chris De Bleser, co-founder of Yet2.com, presented his online technology marketplace that enables interactive technology transfer between corporations, academic institutions, national labs, technology brokers and individual inventors. He reminded the audience that only a fraction of the available technology in a company is actually used, and that so much technology is theoretically available for licensing. Yet2.Com estimates that three to five trillion USD is latent in royalty revenue if means are found to tap from these unused technology sources. His company combines forces and technology from an impressive number of multinational companies who all committed to use Yet2.Com's technology database for allowing interested third parties to find a licensor.

Anthony Belpaire from Info2Clear presented the first pan-European initiative on the Internet to offer creators and copyright holders of intellectual property the opportunity to register, clear and promote their work securely throughout the world and sell it on their own terms. Info2Clear's business model relies on studies of Forrester showing that some twenty billion Euro is lost every year in potential copyright royalties because of the lack of an efficient and cheap instru-ment to clear works for publication via authorization from the legal owner of the rights. Info2Clear is not only a marketplace for copyright owners and users, but offers added value by selling digital certificates who can identify the owner of the work, the duration of the license and the authenticity of the reproduced work with the original work. Info2Clear's business model is oriented towards professional information consumers and is creating a network with a number of major newspaper editors throughout Europe.

The third speaker, Christian Alting von Geusau Houthoff Buruma, entertained the audience with his legal perspective on both presentations, which he summarized as : Yet to Come : Info Unclear. He illustrated how the business concept of both companies could raise a number of questions which remained largely unresolved at the end of the meeting. This did not prevent that all participants were satisfied with all presentations and that nobody questioned anymore the growing role of the internet as a communication tool for licensing executives.

LES Benelux Topic Meeting on 15 November 2000

This full-day topic meeting in Rotterdam brought together representatives from industry and academia to discuss various aspects of this very topical theme, introduced by an array of international speakers. Robert Smailes of the University of Edinburgh hosted the proceedings in an expertly manner, drawing out issues for discussion and providing his own insights from the experience at Edinburgh.

Kirsten Leute of Stanford University described success stories from Stanford's repertoire of licensed technologies and the organisation of the Office of Technology Licensing (OTL). Some 20-25% of disclosures are licensed, with royalties after OTL costs being shared equally between the inventors, the department and the school. There are 25 people in OTL of which 16 are involved in licensing. The University will accept equity as payment, and there have been several spin-off ventures. As an example of a success story, Kirsten described the Sondius™ development. The OTL keeps a "showcase" of some 30 products that recently honoured by an LES award.

Filip de Corte of Janssen Pharmaceutica emphasised the importance to the pharmaceutical industry of cooperation with academia, and went into some aspects of the typical terms under which Janssen (and others) enter into R&D and licensing contracts. Janssen has a website giving details of their standard terms.

Gilles Capart of Sopartec highlighted the differences between standard terms in the US and Canada and the EU. Whereas American universities tend to retain ownership of intellectual property, elsewhere there is a tendency for industry to insist on "Material Transfer Agreements". He made a strong plea for more benchmarking and harmonisation between the US and the EU regions, with the Anglo-Saxon model clearly preferred from his viewpoint.

Harry Marsman of the Vereenigde outlined some of the issues surrounding the theme of testing, in particular whether this could be considered a public or a commercial use of inventions, with all the attendant problems for laboratories and the cultural differences between the US and EU also in this regard.

Dicky Halley of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, discussed aspects of licensing in relation to genomics research and especially the effects of the present differences between the US and Europe in patent legislation concerning protection of gen sequences. Furthermore she discussed pros and cons from the viewpoint of speed of development and availability for the patients. Two discussion sessions, led by Robert Smailes and Louise van den Bos of the Erasmus University, summarized a number of these issues including the financial and other terms of cooperation (on which industry and academia in Europe still hold somewhat conflicting views!), the setting of goals by technology transfer departments as a means of galvanizing management support for licensing, and the advantages and disadvantages of patents and licensing in medical fields, especially rare disease treatment.

The presentations can be found under Meetings at this site.

2001 LES International Annual Conference

Welcome to the first LES International Conference in Africa. Thrusting into the splendid desolation of the southern Atlantic is a range of mountains, making the Cape Peninsula one of the world's loveliest spots, and at its heart is Cape Town. The venue of the conference is the gracious Table Bay Hotel - at the heart of Cape Town's bustling Victoria & Albert Waterfront - which combines Victorian elegance with contemporary charm. For up-to-date program and information and to download the registration form, please visit www.licensing.co.za or contact Adam Lewis at e-mail alewis@adams@adamsadams.co.za

2001 LES Pan European Conference

LES Russia is pleased to invite all LES Members as well as many other persons interested in the field of licensing to the first LES European Conference to be held in Russia. The conference will be held at the famous Taurida Palace in St. Petersburg which is not only the Cultural Capital of Russia as well as an exciting city. Situated on the River Neva this relatively new city, founded in 1703 by Peter the Great, has much more to offer than simply the Hermitage Museum and the Kirov Ballet of the Marinsky Theatre. The city is justly called ''a museum under the open sky'' and also very well known for its networks of channels and rivers with more than 300 bridges over them. The conference ''Licensing: a tool to global progress'' will encompass the modern trends in licensing, IP legislation and practice, and technology transfer with plenary lectures and workshops run by a series of international speakers. We advise all LES members to take this opportunity to network, increase your knowledge and see the wonderful city of St. Petersburg. For those wishing to know more, please contact Valery Medvedev, e-mail pat@Gorodissky.ru

2001 LES Pan American Conference

São Paulo was the site of the Brazilian proclamation of independence from Portugal in 1822. Ever since that bold act, São Paulo has capitalized on its pioneering spirit by attracting immigrants from Europe, Asia and the Middle East to carve out one of the world's most important centers of international trade. Today this vibrant metropolis boasts a thriving business community, fine cuisine and the highest standard of living in South America. At the first LES Pan American Conference themes to be discussed will be: bio-technology and biodiversity aspects: protection and licensing; Licensing in newly -privatized companies in telecommunication, electrical energy and oil and gas industries; Licensing and Internet; TRIPs agreements; Overview on WTO Panels' decisions and on pending panels and Contract Law. For more information and registration, please e-mail abpi@abpi.org.br

Membership of LES Benelux

We wish all LES members a Merry Christmas

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