G. CENTER FOR GENETIC RESOURCE INFORMATION
G-b. Publicity and Intellectual Property Unit - Munehiro Tomikawa Group

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

2004 Annual Publicity and Intellectual Property Unit Report

--This unit makes various efforts to return the outcome of research generated by NIG to the industrial world and the public while respecting the scientists' priorities in terms of scientific ideas, partnership and publications.
--To be more precise, what we have done is to establish scientific results as intellectual property, explain the property rights to the industrial world intelligibly, seek collaboration with commercial industries for actualizing those results and establish partnerships. This shows the importance of carrying out both public relations and the acquisition of intellectual property.
--This unit was set up in March 2003. Since April 2003, a secretary, Ms. Nozomi Yokoyama and Ms. Kiyomi Kuwahara have devoted all their energy to this work from starting up, and had assisted by creating the MTA(Material Transfer Agreement) form, and getting it off the ground. They have also been supporting various works such as planning and promotion of publicity activities and procedures of application for intellectual property rights. The results of our work in 2004 are shown as follows.

(1) Acquirement and utilization of Intellectual Property Rights

--We have continued to promote a sense of entitlement in the scientists belonging to NIG and Division of Life Science in the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai) by giving them speeches on why entitlement is necessary to the outcome of basic research. Also, in visiting laboratories, monitoring the scientific progress and thinking of each scientist, we have explained how intellectual property rights can be gained from their results. We have also established an efficient patenting procedure. We have prepared an invention exposition format to minimize the scientists' burden in informing our unit of their scientific results. Our unit helps the scientists avoid the troublesome task of acquiring of patent rights to the practical applications of their inventions.
--In terms of patent applications, we have tried to promote acquirement of the patent rights so the NIG scientist does not need to bear the costs necessary for the preparation of patent documents. At this time, eight domestic patents have been applied for and four patents are under preparation, of which 15 as a whole will be applied for as NIG patents (including nine joint applications and three international patents) in the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS). One patent has already come into marketing as of November 2003. We got the royalty with a small amount from its first business at April 2004.
--Secondly, we have been involved in making guidelines for the Material Transfer Agreement which stipulates ownership, ethical codes and compensation for biological resources based on research results. At present, three kinds of agreements, depending on the positioning of biological resources as intellectual property, have been created and are in use. Each has a simple version corresponding to specific materials in the research field such as yeast, worms and flies (Form 1) and an intermediate version without provision for sharing of industrial property rights (Form 2) and a complete version with provision for sharing of industrial property rights (Form 3). They have been authorized and, a total of 272 agreements (approximately 80% of them are international) have been signed by the end of this year.
--In addition, we have participated in the Shizuoka-TLO-Yaramaika (STLO) campaign, which facilitates putting patents owned by the NIG into practical use.

(2) Acceleration of public relations activities

--Ideally, this kind of work should be developed over a broad spectrum, however, we have focused our attention on the following main points. We have given priority to our response to visitors, promotion at academic conferences, introduction of research results to the public, and the search for potential collaboration.
--Firstly, we had 9 groups of visitors (total 225 persons) in 2004: technical school students, legal apprentices, high school students, schoolteacher interns, members of the judiciary, elderly community college students and others. An overview of this institute, genetic science and current laboratory experiments was given to the visitors.
--Secondly, promotion at academic conferences has been carried out in order to obtain more excellent students and scientists. We introduced the current research results obtained from NIG scientists at the Japanese Cell Biology Meeting (in Osaka), the Japanese Society for Developmental Biology meeting (in Nagoya), and the Japanese Molecular-Biology meeting (in Kobe).
--Thirdly, we presented fourteen specifically excellent research results in the Hot News column on the website as an introduction of research results and academic awards for life science to the public. We have also had fourteen research results inserted in main-stream newspapers through cooperation with the media. Furthermore, we introduced two scientists to companies which were interested in their work, and fortunately, this effort led to further business-academia collaboration.

(3) Collaboration Research with academia, industry and government, and Social Action Work

--I have been conducting research of Fuji Pharma Valley Cancer Diagnostics Study Group consisting of academia, industry and government. The aim of this project is to increase Research and Development potential in the Mt. Fuji area and its cities of Numazu, Mishima, Fujinomia, Fuji and Nagaizumi and to study together with companies operating in the field of medicine as well as the pharmaceutical industry on the development of cancer diagnostics through genomics and proteomics approaches. Fortunately, we could apply one patent regarding cancer diagnostics based on higher order structure of chromatin DNA this October.
--Recently, the participation of public facilities, such as universities and NIG, is increasing in the Government-Industry-University-Research Cooperation Conference. In June, We attended first Third Government-Industry-University Cooperation Conference as a panelist on behalf of NIG, which was held at Kyoto. It was quite meaningful to be able to develop a relationship with industrial people who were interested in our patent and products.
--In conclusion, acquiring intellectual property and engaging in returning excellent technology from scientific results to the industrial world through public relations will be important factors in gaining wide public recognition of NIG. These efforts are expected to facilitate the financial management of NIG, after turning into independent administrative entities.