Patent Transformation: The Key to Chinese Pharmaceutical Innovation.

Under the guidance and support of the latest policy to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements introduced by the state, with the abc technology will be widely used in the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, the scientific and technological "Chenguo" can be truly transformed into a useful "result" to society, and promote the "spring" of Chinese medicine innovation will really come.
on the eve of the 2020 Spring Festival, the new coronavirus swept in, keeping people at a social distance of one meter away.
Is now warm in spring and green in summer, but globally, the "cold winter of the epidemic" seems far from over, and as the epidemic continues to spread around the world, how to develop the economy in the "post-epidemic era" has become an important issue.
science and technology are the first productive forces, the role of economic promotion is self-evident.
as an important supply side of science and technology universities and research institutes, how to effectively translate the results into productive forces is very important.
In February, when the domestic epidemic was most severe, several ministries and departments of the State Council issued "Several Opinions on Improving the Quality of Patents in Higher Education to Promote Conversion and Application", "Several Opinions on Standardizing the Use of SCI Papers in Higher Education to Establish a Correct Evaluation Guide" and "Several Measures on Breaking the Bad Guidance of "Only Papers" in Science and Technology Evaluation (Trial)" "On Promoting the Intellectual Property Rights Work of Central Enterprises" High-quality development guidance and other policies, and in May further issued "on the further promotion of the development of specialized technology transfer institutions in institutions of higher learning", "to give scientific research personnel the ownership of scientific and technological achievements or long-term use of the pilot implementation program" "2020 in-depth implementation of the national intellectual property strategy to accelerate the construction of intellectual property power to promote the plan" and other specific measures and plans, directly referring to the transformation of science and technology.
the country's major ministries to focus on a little, such a tight introduction of policy measures, or relatively rare.
"pain" of the transformation of pharmaceutical achievements This outbreak prevention and control let us fully realize the importance of the development of the pharmaceutical industry.
on the one hand, the pharmaceutical industry is related to the people's life and health, related to the national medical and health strategy security, on the other hand, it is also a fast-growing sunrise industry, is an important part of the national economy.
, the pharmaceutical industry has high-input, high-tech characteristics, the need for patent protection to stimulate innovation and balance imitation and the public interest.
, however, similar to the overall situation, the transformation of China's medical achievements is not satisfactory.
take artemisinin, which the Chinese people are proud of, as an example.
"Project 523" attack team represented by The Butcher was the first to discover the chemical structure and relative configuration of artemisinin, and in 1977 published a paper in the Scientific Advisory in the name of the "Artemisinin Structure Research Collaboration Group" and published the relevant research results (Artemisinin Structure Research Collaboration Group. A new type of polythyl esters - artemisinin. Scientific Briefing.1977 (3): 142).
then, foreign companies such as Sanofi of France and Novarce in Switzerland, in cooperation with China, developed coartem and other compound artemisinin products, and through the World Health Organization drug pre-certification, through public procurement channels to enter the international market.
from a scientific point of view, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) do have good malaria treatment results and save millions of lives.
Chinese scientist Tu Yu won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015, China achieved the "zero" breakthrough of the Nobel Prize in Science.
but industry sources have said that Chinese drugmakers have a market share of less than 1 per cent in the global market for about $1.5bn in antimalarials and their derivatives, and that most local companies are suppliers of raw artemisinin.
this is regarded by the industry as "domestic flowering, foreign fruit picking" (Chang Lei, Yang Yuhan, Gao Ping, Yao Wei. Artemisinin: scientific research and commercial regret. Beijing Business Daily.2019).
, similar problems have been found in more than 20 sub-technical areas such as anti-slow hepatitis B drugs, anti-Alzheimer's drugs, monoclonal antibodies, and antibiotics.
drug research and development from upstream to downstream, need to go through preclinical research, clinical application, clinical research, market licensing and other stages, the time of more than 10 years.
Along this "drug innovation value chain" from upstream to downstream, to research and development input, the number of papers, patents, references, patent licenses / transfers, the number of projects in research, the number of new drugs and other innovative indicators are measured, it is very clear that this upstream and downstream upside down, head and foot light problem.
We have many papers and patents in many sub-sectors of medicine, but none of the Chinese products in the global best-selling drug list, China's successful entry into the international pharmaceutical market products are few.
S. Intellectual Property Use Fee Deficit According to the 2020 Science and Engineering Indicators report, China will spend $496 billion in 2017, the United States $549 billion, and gross domestic product (GDP) will account for 2.15 percent and 2.81 percent, respectively, in terms of research and development spending.
25 per cent of the world's $2.2 trillion in research and development spending in 2017, while China accounted for 23 per cent, with the two countries accounting for almost half of the world's research and development spending.
The National Science Board. Science and Engineering Investments. 2020.) China has been the world's number one in terms of the number of scientific papers and patents for many years, and in terms of patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), it surpassed the United States as the world's number one in 2019 for the first time.
, however, China is very low in terms of the intellectual property benefits of research inputs.
China's intellectual property fee revenue in 2018 was just $5.6 billion, while the U.S. was $130.5 billion, while Japan, Switzerland, Singapore and South Korea were $45.6 billion, $23.9 billion, $8.7 billion and $7.6 billion, according to the World Trade Organization.
The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (CFSA) pointed out that China's intellectual property usage fees have become the third largest trade deficit in services after travel and transportation (State Administration of Foreign Exchange.2019 China Balance of Payments Report.2020).
why do we invest a lot, a lot of papers, a lot of patents, but it is difficult to turn into innovative products, to produce considerable economic value?Take the market transformation of Chinese university patents into an example.
years of rapid development, China's universities in the global university rankings have been significantly improved.
However, according to the State Intellectual Property Office, the industrialization rate of university patents in 2018 was only 2.7%, compared with 14.1% for individuals, 8.9% for scientific research units and 46% for enterprises.
, colleges and universities continue to pay high patent maintenance costs.
on the one hand, the market needs technology, economic development needs science and technology, on the other hand, although colleges and universities have a large number of scientific and technological achievements, but it is difficult to commercial use, into productivity.
2015, China amended the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Promotion of the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements and issued a number of provisions and action plans.
These initiatives have established an incentive system for the transformation of university achievements: on the one hand, loosen the bonds of scientific researchers, promise researchers to stay without pay for entrepreneurship, and retain their posts for a period of time, if the failure of entrepreneurship, they can return to scientific research positions;
the establishment of incentive system for scientific research personnel, but also the need to establish patent conversion technology, improve the commercial conversion rate of scientific research results.
patent is different from the paper, there are practical requirements, but also different from trademarks, more technical.
patent data have technical, legal, and commercial attributes and are of very important value.
according to the World Intellectual Property Index 2019, the total number of patent applications filed worldwide in 2018 was 3.3263 million, generating an average of nearly 10,000 patent applications per day, with both Volume and Speed both high.
patent data also contains structured data, unstructured data, unstructured data, and image data such as inventors, time, references, families, claims, descriptions, declarations, sequence tables, drawings, chemicals, and so on, with diversity (Variety).
addition, patents are subject to invention, examination, disclosure, approval and other aspects, authenticity (Veracity) is guaranteed, false applications will be invalidated.
, patent data is open, easy to obtain, with more structured information, easy to standardize and automatic analysis.
operational level, data-driven can be applied to the key link of conversion work, "the identification and bargaining of transaction targets", specifically related to patent technology scanning and patent value evaluation of two key technologies.
patented technology scanning Patented technology scanning helps to highlight and identify high-quality patents in a dense "patent jungle".
technology is often looking for buyers, capital parties are looking for technology, how to establish a stable and credible data docking mechanism is the key to the transformation of results.
of technology in the field of pharmaceutical technology is relatively high, this phenomenon is more obvious, many investors do not understand technology, it is difficult to judge the technical strength of the technical side.
approach is to consult experts in the relevant field, personal limitations, conflicts of interest, representativeness and accuracy of expert choices, and relatively high costs make practical operations difficult.
The latest Patent Landscape analysis technology has developed the Patent Pattern Report Entry (RIPL) standard on the basis of the Priority Report Entry (PRISMA) for systematic evaluation and meta-analysis, and has been studied in hundreds of technology segments such as induced pluripotent stem cells, objectively showing the technical landscape in various fields.
In order to fully reflect the characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry, professionals, on the basis of patent pattern technology, have developed spatial characterization systems for pharmaceutical technology, seed technology analysis systems, competitive intelligence mining methods and index ranking systems, patent licensing intelligent classifiers, etc., from technical features (technology clusters, core technologies, edge technologies, cross-technology, etc.), time evolution (milestones, peaks, platform periods, trends, etc.), space Layout (location advantage, intelligent positioning, division of labor, spillover effects, etc.), organizational ecology (competitors, collaborators, leaders, followers, etc.) comprehensive analysis, for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of technical parties, financial parties, service providers to provide technical information, patent navigation, patent early warning, to promote all parties in the premise of complete information accurate docking, match potential partners, promote the transfer of results.
through patent pattern technology to carry out panoramic scanning of sub-sector technology, can effectively reduce the information asymmetry in the sample field, for investors and developers and other stakeholders to build bridges and provide sufficient theoretical and data support to support scientific decision-making.
Value Assessment Patent Value Assessment helps to narrow the value expectations of both parties to the transaction.
in technology transactions, the seller often wants to sell the highest price, the buyer wants to buy at the lowest price, and the greater the difference in value expectations between the two parties, the harder it is to close the deal.
, the value evaluation of technical targets is very critical, and the evaluation methods widely used in practice are mainly income, market and cost.
These accounting evaluation methods are mainly applicable to the evaluation of tangible assets, and the technical subject matter usually contains patents, patent portfolios, technical secrets, etc., is a typical intangible asset, in the expected return, market equivalents, cost-benefit relationship and other aspects of the traditional methods are difficult to measure, evaluation institutions often subjectively judge based on experience.
the subjective nature of this assessment method often leads to buyers and sellers each agreeing to a price, the transaction is difficult to reach.
In recent years, with the accumulation of historical data on technology transactions, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data and cloud computing ("ABC") technologies, the intelligent development of accounting, the international community has gradually begun to refer to the objective data-based technical assessment methods, this method Based on historical transaction data, training simulation, benchmark reference and empirical testing, it can provide the evaluation results of relatively objective technical transaction subjects for both parties to the transaction, which is an important supplement to the traditional accounting evaluation method, which is conducive to narrowing the value expectations of both parties to the transaction, promoting the transaction, and has a wide range of application prospects in practice.
example of this is the OT300 patent index launched by OceanTomo.
Some researchers have used a variety of methods to transform technical factors, commercial factors and legal factors into objective quantitative indicators, and constructed a patent evaluation model of "technology as a nuclear, commercial, legal-backed" drug, which can provide scientific and objective evaluation results for drug technology transactions in practice and facilitate transactions.
analysis, two applications of data-driven technology scanning and value evaluation can effectively help both sides to "find the target" and "negotiated the transaction price".
We believe that, under the guidance and support of the latest national policy to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, with the wide application of ABC technology in the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, the scientific and technological "Chenguo" can be truly transformed into a socially useful "results" to promote the "spring" of Chinese pharmaceutical innovation.
Liu Kunming, Feng Ye and Lu Liyang also contributed to this article.