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Innovation Council in collaboration with co-authors Mark Schultz and Douglas Park created the policy brief Empowering Innovation, Enabling Collaboration: A Blueprint for Pandemic Preparedness to highlight key lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic response and explains how to incorporate them into the new pandemic preparedness treaty being negotiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its member states.

This article from IP scholar Adam Mossoff presents the proposed EU SEP Regulation, which is due to be released on 26 April by DG GROW.

According to Mossoff, the leaked SEP Regulation would be counterproductive to a range of European goals, including ongoing innovation in cellular technology and a central role in standardization. He points out that available evidence suggests that, at best, the SEP Regulation is unnecessary – and that, at worst, it could stunt innovation and economic growth in the EU in the years to come.

A concern raised by the author is that the EUIPO has no previous patent law experience, yet the SEP Regulation plans to hand full control of important SEP issues to the EUIPO. The EUIPO would determine what patents are able to be classed as essential, thus, SEPs, along with the appropriate royalty rates for licensing such SEPs, in addition to mandating public disclosure of licensing agreements. Furthermore, it would also be able to prohibit licensing or litigation of SEPs that have
not been confirmed as essential, that have not been registered, or that have set a different royalty rate for the relevant SEPs.

The author argues that, if adopted, the SEP Regulation would destabilize the global telecommunications market as well as strongly favouring IP users over innovators.

Furthermore, Mossoff notes that this type of regulation could be advantageous for China, which could leverage it to continue discriminatory treatment against Western innovators in cellular technology. Overall, he expresses concern that the new EU SEP Regulation would negatively affect technological innovation and economic growth in the EU by destroying incentives for SEP owners to continue investing in R&D and participating in open standardization processes.

Click here to read the full article:

New EU Regulatory Regime for SEPs will Upend Mobile Telecommunications Sector, by Adam Mossoff, 12 April 2023, IPWatchdog.

For further reading, additional resources about the leaked SEP Regulation include:

The European Commission’s SEP licensing plans are terrible on every level, by Joff Wild, 30 March 2023, IAM.

Exclusive: EU patent body to oversee tech-standard patent royalties – EU draft rule, by Foo Yun Chee, 28 March 2023, Reuters.

European Commission departs from best practices in hasty preparation of standard-essential patent proposal that is fundamentally flawed and unbalanced, by Florian Mueller, 29 March 2023, FOSS Patents.

European Commission to propose radical new SEP/FRAND regime with major consequences for patent owners, by Adam Houldsworth, 29 March 2023, IAM.

European Commission set to give EUIPO responsibility for standard essential patents: big challenges lie ahead, by Trevor Little, 29 March 2023, World Trademark Review.

Proposed EU SEP regulation will also harm net licensees: implementers of standard-essential patents must be careful what they wish for, by Florian Mueller, 2 April 2023, FOSS Patents.

Innovation Council sat down with Neo Moloi, Co-Founder of the innovative South African SME Sawubona Mycelium, to learn more about his company’s fermentation platform for producing bio–based ingredients for cosmetics, biopharma, and food. Sawubona Mycelium, a founding member of Innovation Council, is looking to expand into new sectors and markets in the coming years. Read more about their technology solution and journey here.

Innovation Council’s newest member, All-Weather Roads Engineering based in South Africa, commercialises a novel asphalt–binding solution. Emmanuel Mothabi, the company’s founder, shares insights about his company’s invention, impact, and challenges. Click here to read more.

A wildfire raging on the slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain spread on Sunday (April 18^th) to the University of Cape Town (a member of the Innovation Council), burning the historic campus library and forcing students to evacuate. We hope the situation can be brought under control as soon as possible. Our thoughts go out to everyone there.

On the occasion of the WTO TRIPS Council online side event focusing on the intersection of innovation, IP and sustainability – which will take place on March 9 at 16:00 – we are re-posting some resources about IC member Shiok Meats. Shiok Meats is a Singaporean company that produces cell-based crustacean meat. Shiok Meats plans to bring healthy, nutritious, environmentally-friendly and cruelty-free crustacean meat to tables everywhere in the coming years, disrupting the global shrimp market which is worth an estimated 40b USD annually. This month marks the one-year anniversary since the Singaporean innovators introduced their first shrimp dumpling. Shrimp grown from cells has several advantages over wild caught shrimp or shrimp raised through aquaculture – notably in relation to health, environment, and labor impacts – but further innovation is required to bring down production costs. This is the goal of the team at Shiok Meats over the next 2-3 years.

Read more:

Shiok Meats Raises $4.6 Million Seed Round To Develop Cell-Based Shrimp

How artificial shrimps could change the world

Singapore’s Shiok Meats hopes to hook diners with lab-grown shrimp

Could ‘labriculture’ be the future of food?

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has commissioned a study, which is to be released shortly, for the purpose of identifying policies that enhance access to the intellectual property (IP) system by women inventors, creators, and entrepreneurs. While stating that it is not yet possible to identify a list of “best practices” in this area—due simply to a low level of research on the subject to date—the authors pinpoint a number of promising programs for the advancement of women in the IP system. They distill both a short list of barriers to women’s success in this arena and a lineup of possible next steps towards surmounting each of them.

Read the full story.

Intellectual Property Securities Corporation (IPSE) just received its NASDAQ ticker and announces their intent to list through a traditional IPO in 2021, according to Swiss Financiers. IPSE, a novel kind of security called an Intellectual Property Security, allows Intellectual Property owners to sell current and future authoring and neighbouring royalties on the stock market.

With this listing, IPSE will be able to start offering its Intellectual Property Securitisation solutions to issuers. IPSE intends to create a new market segment in full partnership with the NASDAQ, that will be solely dedicated to the listing and trading of IPS instruments.

The target valuation of IPSE will be above the $1 billion mark reflecting the high-quality of the innovative solution and the size of the total addressable market.

Read the full story.

The need for the rapid development and global distribution of a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection has spurred a number of novel collaborations between the pharmaceutical companies, research entities, and other stakeholders. These collaborations aim to ensure broad access to new health technologies to address the pandemic.

• One example is the University of Oxford Jenner Institute vaccine candidate, developed with AstraZeneca, that included collaborations with Catalent Biologics (Italy), Symbiosis Pharmaceutical Services (UK), Oxford Biomedica (UK), Emergent BioSolutions, BioKangtai (China), and R-Pharm (Russia). Through the WHO’s Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, AstraZeneca signed an agreement with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on vaccine development, manufacturing, and procurement, ensuring 300 million doses of the vaccine for low- and middle-income countries. Separately, AstraZeneca also signed a license agreement with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to supply 1 billion doses of vaccine to low- and middle-income countries.
• Another example involves Sanofi and GSK, which signed a Statement of Intent with Gavi, to make available 200 million doses of their adjuvanted recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, if approved by regulatory authorities.
• A third example focuses on Johnson & Johnson.  The company has committed to bringing an affordable vaccine to the public on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use and anticipates the first batches of a COVID-19 vaccine to be available for emergency use authorization in early 2021.