Perpetual Innovation

Category: Patents

  • Happy Days are near, but yet so far away, for Generic Viagra

    The discussion on when pharma patents expire is often long and tortuous.
    The the ED world of Viagra and Cialis we discuss the 2017 patent cliff here.
    True, Cialis patent(s) expire in 2017, so it is reasonable to expect the influx of generics soon… Here’s a list of patents related to Cialis. Note that there are a lot of patents listed that go all the way to 2020.

    Here is a great discussion about the expiration of Phara patents related to Viagra. One of the main patents in viagra falls into the 1995 rule where the expiration date is computed based on the longer of the old method (17 years from issue) and the new method (20 years from first filing date). The 20 years method would be long gone. It probably took Pfizer some very fancy footwork to delay issue of the Viagra patent for almost 10 years from first filing, so the 17 years method computes longest and works best for Viagra. Plus, they got a term extension, so the patent doesn’t expire until April of 2020.

    But generic Viagra. A settlement with the giant of generics, Teva, allows Teva to sell a generic version of Viagra starting in December of 2017. But Teva must pay royalties to Pfizer. Pfizer recently raised prices, presumably to game this whole competition thing ensuing in 2017.

    Levitra faces expiration of patents in 2018.

    Great discussion on all these ED drugs is here at AccessRX.

    Of course you could use another drug that is “a rose by another name”: Revatio. Consumer Reports on Revatiois not in the business of making medical advised, but they suggest the the Revatio blood pressure drug might possibly work in the same way as Viagra since is contains the same active ingredient (sildenafil). 

    There is also a move to try to make the ED drugs an over-the-counter thing. Hmmm.

  • A Good News Story from an Unexpected Source

    Here at IAM-Media is an example of using patents to secure products in a global market.
    Its full strategic management of its 200 patents included creating barriers to entry  and to transform the antenna industry.  This approach does not take place overnight, more than a decade.  The company began initially with patent protected product sales which was quite successful.  Well into the market adoption,  Fractus concluded that licensing for royalties was the best option for the future.  It resulted in over $100m in royalties.

    Fractus also dealt with infringements by major companies and had to be helped by the Spanish courts.  Overall, a good news story about the patent commercialization success of a small company.

  • Sustainable Long-term good for R&D, Patents and Profits

    Here’s exerts from the blog over at IPzine, a sister blog spot.

    A recent study shows how long-term focus pays off. This study concentrated on switching the CEO compensation to longer-term. From that point forward, what happened, on average to several things related to the performance over time.

    Great study was by Flammer and Bansal (2016) and summarized in the WSJ, CEOs should focus on the long term, a study says. Although the study is coming out soon in the Strategic Management Journal, you can find it here.

    The researchers selected companies that were long-term focused based on those companies that had a long-term compensation package presented to the board that was narrowly approved. The narrowly approved implies that this was a bit of a surprise to the executives resulting, potentially, in a paradigm shift toward longer-term focus. The board voting was reviewed from 2005 through 2012 so that there would be room for performance analysis.

    There are many positives related to long-term focus all around. Companies with a long-term focus do better all around (profits, net profit margin, sales, stock price, etc.). Those long-term focus had a statistically significant improvement over the longer term (2 years and longer). Interestingly, they had a small dip insignificant dip in the short term.

    [Methodology and results related to patents is discussed here in the IPzine blog. There are lots of assumptions made about the close vote by the board to align compensation with long-term results in conjunction with the subsequent financial performance of these publicly traded firms. Patents were monitored to see how they cited past patents and the citations of the companies patents in the future. This gives a good proxy of the value of the patents and how revolutionary they are (to the firm).]

    Verdict. Boards should focus on long-term for compensation. This means that they have to be willing to take lesser profits in the short term.

    There are also very strong correlations to the KLD factors, collectively and all four components: employees, environment, consumers and society.
    Verdict. Corporations should focus on sustainable, long-term targets for goals and for compensation.

    They have some limitations to this study, but they also combine it with good literature support for long-term-centric management practices. And minimizing the principle-agent problem common to executive compensation.
    We want everyone highly motivated by the long-term, sustainable success of businesses (& not-for-profits & Gov)…
    Anything else is, well, short-sighted!

    References
    Azoulay P, Graff Zivin JS, Manso G (2011). Incentives and creativity: evidence from the academic life sciences. RAND Journal of Economics 42(3): 527–554.

    Flammer, C., & Bansal, P. (2016). Does a long-term orientation create value? Evidence from a regression discontinuity. Strategic Management Journal. doi:10.1002/smj.2629

  • ARM Holdings is giving up their "holding" to Sprint/SoftBank

    ARM Holdings, the maker of chips and chip making technology has week a favorite here at IPZine. They are basically an IP company holding lots of patents on lots of stuff. They specialize in energy-efficient, reduced instruction set (RISC) chip technology; build it and then license it out to chip makers.
    They have really taken off into the work of the Internet of Things.
    Today SoftBank (parent of Sprint) has offered to by ARMH in an all cash bid. The stock is up 50% today. Even at this elevated price, the price-to-earnings ratio is 70!. Compare that to Intel (INTC) with a paltry PE of 15. Profit margin of 35% vs 20% for INTC.
    ARM has remained independent and resisted the various take-over pressures. Until now. This changes somewhat the ARM dynamic of licensing tech to multiple players and making lots of money from licensing revenues (nearly pure profit). ARM has focused on tools and R&D and left the heavy work of manufacturing, distribution, etc. to their clients.
    This is probably a good time to start getting out of the stock; SoftBand (Sprint) is not nearly the same type of investment. Sprint is more of a utility play, not R&D.
    The drop in British Pound has made ARMH a far better deal to acquire. (ARMH is UK based.)
    On a separate note, SoftBank’s interests in buying up chip makers might become more complicated with ARM Holdings, in the company’s holdings.
    In the end, the independence of ARM Holdings didn’t hold.

  • Here Are the Biggest Crowdfunding Campaigns of 2015 – Bloomberg Business

    Here Are the Biggest Crowdfunding Campaigns of 2015 – Bloomberg Business:

    Crowdfunding really hit its stride this year with people just crowding in to jump on the bandwagon of new and innovative ideas. Of course great fundraising ideas are for books and movies, especially those that sequels or follow-ons with an established groupie base. Veronica Mars, the high-school sleuth, is and example from last year on Kickstarter. (See our blog here,)

    This years list from Bloomberg Business is very enlightening. Of course there are follow-ons to games and movies. That’s a very straightforward use of crowd funding. There are philanthropic approaches, like remodeling historic buildings. And, of course, new inventions.

    One that caught a lot of buzz is Flow Hive, that raised ~$12m for a process to put a tap into a bee hive and simply pour honey when you want some (money). This process avoids the pain and suffering of opening the hive in order to get at the honey.

    Other things that draw funding include eclectic games and exploding kittens.

    No matter how you look at it, however, the Internet (and crowdfunding) is one of the great equalizers of our lifetime. Anyone, anywhere, can raise money for a good idea; simply spread the word in the right settings.

    Now, if the idea has intellectual property protection as well (patents, copyright, trademark), then the scaleability of funding and adoption could be off-the-charts.

    ‘via Blog this’