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The Intellectual Property Office (IP Office) at Children's Hospital analyzes each invention, and finds answers to the following questions:
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- What will be the product?
- What impact will this invention have on clinical care or research?
- What is the market size and opportunity for this product?
- How long will it take and what steps will be required to get the product to market?
- What is the likelihood that this invention, in its current stage of development, will be licensed by a company for further development?
- What is the best form of intellectual property protection for this invention?
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CALL THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE!
We will set up a meeting with you immediately to discuss your work. Ideally we hope you will come to us 4 weeks before your abstract is published or, if there is no abstract, 4 weeks before your poster or oral presentation. We will evaluate your technology and if needed we will arrange for a patent application to be filed. In a pinch, we can arrange for a patent filing in a very short time, but this is not ideal.
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A patent application document is similar to a grant application in some ways. The IP Office and patent attorneys working with us prefer at least 4 weeks to draft, review, finalize and file a patent application. During the process, attorneys apply legal standards to identify actual inventors. Once a patent application is filed, it takes 3 to 5 years for the US Patent Office to evaluate the patent application in light of the scientific literature and other patents and then come to a decision and issue a U.S. patent.
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Yes and no. A patent establishes not only who first conceived the idea, but also who reduced it to practice first. However, during the evaluation by the US Patent Office, a patent application is published and its specific contents become public information. Those who would like to utilize your idea commercially will have to come to the IP Office to seek a license for it. However, if someone would like to use your idea for research purposes at a non-commercial institution such a university, in most cases a patent will not prevent them from doing so.
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Contact the Intellectual Property Office. We will meet with you to evaluate your invention. If there is a patentable invention, we will work with the IP or Technology Transfer office of the other institution to create a joint invention agreement that will define the rights of each institution in the invention.
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Yes. After reimbursement of patent costs, inventors get a share of the income that results from licensing the patents and the sale of products. The inventors' share is defined by the Children's Hospital Policy on Inventions and Intellectual Property and is shown below. The full policy can be viewed at CHB Policy
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Harvard Faculty of Medicine are permitted to pursue certain external activities within the Policy on Conflicts of Interest and Commitment. Always check with your department chair and principal investigator before signing a consulting agreement. For more information please see the Policy on Conflict of Interest and Commitment for Harvard Faculty of Medicine (http://www. hms.harvard.edu/integrity/conf.html). You will also find resources on the IPO website that can guide you, including "Red Flags in Industry Research Documents" and "Consulting Agreement Kit", which offer information about consulting agreement documents.
Documents
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Talk to the PI of the lab you are leaving to confirm it is acceptable for you to bring reagents to your new lab at CHB. In addition, call the IPO. We will put in place a simple Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) so that you can freely publish your future work and protect any new inventions relating to the transferred reagents.
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*It is important that you do not distribute the material without an MTA*
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- Contact the IPO and we will arrange an MTA with the other institution.
- If there is a lot of interest in your research tool, we may be able to license the reagent to a research tools company like Santa Cruz, Clontech or Sigma, who will distribute and sell your reagent. As discussed in Question 5, if we license the research tool out and it generates income, you would receive a share.
- If your research tool is a plasmid, you might want to consider submitting it to Addgene.com, a service organization who will manage the distribution.
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If the company is willing to provide its proprietary drugs for your research, the company will send a copy of their MTA to you or the IP Office. In many cases, the IP Office will have to negotiate changes in the MTA that ensure the hospital and you maintain certain rights - such as the right to publish results and to retain ownership of intellectual property.
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