Latest research on the top patent lawyers

Silico Research’s analysis of over 40,000 patents and applications filed at the USPTO in the life sciences and selected IT areas between 1995-2007 has shown that the California-based firm Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP was the leading patent firm when measured by the number of patents and applications filed.

Having filed Cohen and Boyer’s patent for recombinant DNA, the patent that helped found the biotechnology industry in the 1970s, Townsend and Townsend has built up a strong presence in the life sciences sector and electronics and software. Townsend and Townsend and Crew’s largest clients include the University of California, the Californian Institute of Technology, Neuralab Ltd, Yahoo Inc, Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc and Metabolex Inc.

Other firms in the top ten firms, in order from the largest number of patents and applications filed, were Morrison and Foerster LLP, Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett and Dunner LLP, Birch Stewart Kolasch and Birch, Knobbe Martens Olson and Bear LLP, Oblon Spivak McClelland Maier and Newstadt PC, Nixon and Vanderhye PC, Hamilton Brook Smith and Reynolds PC, Sughrue Mion LLC and Jones Day LLC. With the exception of Morrison and Foerster and Jones Day all the firms are intellectual property boutique firms.

Most of the top ten firms have a predominantly American client base. Exceptions were Oblon Spivak McClelland Maier and Newstadt and Nixon and Vanderhye. Oblon Spivak filed a large number of patents for foriegn clients including Ajinomoto Co Inc (Japan), the Institute Pasteur (France), L’Oreal (France), and Kao Corporation (Japan). Nixon and Vanderhye also has a strong presence in the Japanese sector filing a number of patents for clients including Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co Ltd.

The analysis showed that a number of companies eschew outside counsel and rely on in-house lawyers to file patents and applications. Companies relying on in-house lawyers include the biotechnology companies Human Genome Sciences Inc and Genentech Inc and the pharmaceutical companies Johnson and Johnson Inc, Bristol-Myers Squibb Inc, Novartis and Merck and Co Inc.

Cross-sector collaboration set to grow

Cross-sector partnering and licensing looks like being one of the faster growing collaboration areas over the next few years as companies look to leverage their intellectual property investments beyond core markets. We believe that as large companies struggle to find attractive new partners in their own sectors and increasingly get bogged down in anti-trust issues and the conundrum of collaborating with competitors, then looking outside their own sector for licensing and intellectual property-based collaboration is going to become a more and more attractive proposition.

Hewlett Packard is trying to position itself at the head of the cross-sector collaboration pack. In January 2004 HP established a separate IP licensing organisation which centralised the thousands of patents originally managed by the company’s various product divisions. The goal of the new licensing organisation was to leverage HP’s patent portfolio to promote technical collaborations with partners and improve the company’s revenue stream. HP’s patent licensing portfolio, which is one of the largest in the information technology industry, consists of over 30,000 patents worldwide and covers a wide range of inventions, including imaging and printing, personal computers, software, storage, servers, display devices, mobile devices, information technology services, networking and other emerging technologies such as nanotechnology.

Led by Joe Beyers, an electrical engineer by training, the IP licensing group is actively seeking opportunities where HP’s patents can be used to win business in new sectors. In the last four years HP’s licensing group has been involved in at least 150 projects and has entered a number of cross-sector licensing agreements. This includes a five year agreement with Flextronics, a Singapore-based contract manufacturer, signed in in November 2006, which involved the licensing of HP’s digital imaging technology, originally designed by HP for its Photosmart digital cameras, to improve the quality of cell phone cameras. HP is to be paid royalties from any products developed through the agreement. Another agreement was signed in May 2007 with Nanolithosolutions Inc, a Californian based start-up nanotechnology company that HP has an equity stake in, allowing the use of HP’s nanoimprint lithography technology to develop mask aligners, a machine used in semiconductor wafer processing.

The cultural and technical challenges for executives used to a particular way of looking at problems will be immense. But then so will be the potential payoff. Either way, watch this space.

HP’s latest ventures are taking it into the healthcare sector. Exploring new ways to apply HP’s Singapore-developed thermal inkjet technology, originally patented for inkjet cartridges, HP’s central research laboratory has began to investigate how inkjet technology can be deployed for medical devices. One of the first products to emerge from this research has been a skin patch to deliver drugs. The advantages of the device over other drug delivery platforms on the market is that it is less painful than most drug delivery systems which rely on hypodermic needles and it can deliver several drugs at the same time. Using hundreds of microneedles that barely penetrate the skin and microscopic wells that store the drugs, the device is controlled by a microprocessor that can be programmed with a patient’s dosage history and protocols to prevent adverse drug interactions.

Keen to find a partner to promote the device, HP contacted Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government body responsible for promoting indigenous business in Ireland. In September 2007 HP signed a licensing agreement with Crospon, an Irish start-up medical device company founded in Galway in 2006, to manufacture and market the skin patch in return for royalty payments. At the time of signing the agreement with HP Crospon had just received Euro2.3 million in seed financing, which included funding from Enterprise Ireland. The founder and chief executive officer of Crospon is John O’Dea, who helped found Caradyne, an Irish-based respiratory products company acquired by Respironics Inc in 2004. Aiming to get a product on to the market in 3 to 4 years, HP and Crospon believe the device could eventually be used for the delivery of insulin to diabetic patients or multiple drugs to heart or AIDS patients. Crospon is hoping to raise Euro3 million to Euro5 million over the next 18 months to help it bring the product to market.

The financial market has already recognised the lucrative potential of HP’s cross sector collaboration with Crospon. Within a day of announcing its deal with Crospon, HP’s shares rose 87 cents to $49.87, its stock having already risen by 21% in 2007. HP aims to license its inkjet technology soon for other medical purposes. HP’s central research laboratory has devised ways to use the technology for the purposes of pulmonary inhalers, and was issued with a patent by the USPTO in February 2004. The technology allows the precise delivery of droplets or powder of medicine through the mouth or nose and, like the skin patch, has the ability to administer multiple drugs at the same time as well as control the dose and prevent overdose (patent number US 20040107961). The laboratory is also using the technology to devise new methods to apply coatings to medical implants.

So we may well see a wave of life science companies exploring the licensing of intellectual property to large technology companies and telecommunications companies or vice versa over the next few years. We may see drug development patents applied to disk storage or disk storage patents applied to drug development. The cultural and technical challenges for executives used to a particular way of looking at problems will be immense. But then so will be the potential payoff. Either way, watch this space.

Takeda flexes its partnering muscles

Are the Japanese healthcare majors emerging as serious competitors to the largest North American and European pharmaceutical companies for the most partners for fast growing biotechnology companies? Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company, Takeda Pharmaceutical, the sixteenth largest pharmaceutical company in the world, certainly believes so.

Over the past two years Takeda has moved away from its previous strategy of focusing on partnering with smaller Japanese companies towards alliances with international partners to boost its development pipeline.

International alliances are seen as particularly important at a time when two of the company’s most important drugs are coming off patent. Takeda’s gastrointestinal drug lansoprazole came off patent at the USPTO in February 2007, and its USPTO patent for pioglitazone, used for the treatment of diabetes type II, is due to expire in 2011.

Takeda has not been able to fill the pipeline with drugs from other Japanese companies and so it is now forced to focus on alliances, partnerships and acquisitions outside Japan. In order to make it a more attractive partner Takeda has established a streamlined decision making process and a Global Licensing and Business Development Department that reports directly to the company’s President. Takeda now has alliance specialists in all the three key geographical regions: Japan, North American and Europe.

The volume of deals signed by Takeda over the past three years has been impressive. The company has signed a number of cancer-based alliances. For example, in late 2004 it signed a deal with BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals around the chemotherapeutic agent Tavocept. As part of the deal Takeda made a $52 million equity investment in BioNumerick. Takeda signed a three year alliance in April 2006 with Arius Research Inc to research antibodies for anti-cancer treatments and in July 2006 it signed a four year development and marketing agreement with Galaxy Biotech for a humanized anti-Hepatocyte Growth Factor monoclonal antibody.

Takeda has signed a number of deals in the CNS area including a co-development and co-promotion with H. Lundbeck A/S signed in September 2007 for compounds for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. Takeda made an upfront payment of $40 million to Lundbeck and will pay up to $345 million in milestone payments over the life of the partnership.

In the field of cardiovascular diseases Takeda has entered alliances aimed at several disease targets. In November 2006 it signed a deal worth up to $230 million with Xoma Ltd to jointly discover, develop and produce therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. In June 2007 it signed a three target agreement with Archemix Corporation focusing on the discovery, development and commercialization of aptamer-based therapeutics.

As well as signing co-development licenses Takeda has in-licensed a number of compounds from companies ranging from Merck KGaA through to Santhera Pharmaceuticals and Sucampo Pharmaceuticals.

In addition to partnerships Takeda is exploring equity based and risk finance driven relationships. A venture capital subsidiary, Takeda Research Investment, was set up in 2002 located in Palo Alto and tasked with looking for cardiovascular, cancer, urological, central nervous system and gastrointestinal research collaborations.

So far, TRI has invested in seven companies. Investments have included Serenex, a chemoproteomics-oriented drug discovery company focused on the discovery and development of novel therapeutics targeting cancer, and Receptor Biologix, a biotechnology company founded on the discovery of a new class of endogenous regulatory proteins.

Can Takeda succeed in its strategy? Maybe. It has a number of factors going for it. Access to the wealthy, rapidly aging Japanese market and Asian markets is a big selling point for companies interested in age-related conditions. Takeda also has a lot of cash to invest. With $16 billion in cash and short term investments, Takeda’s investment capacity is not significantly less than Pfizer’s, which has $22.75 billion in cash. Finally but, possibly most crucially, biotechnology investors fed up with quarterly results driven decision-making, may see real advantages in having a partner with the long-term perspective that Japanese companies famously bring to investments. Together these factors could be a winning combination in the battle for the partnerships that are going to shape the future of the pharmaceutical industry.

Biotechnology beyond the US

US inventors have continued to dominate biotechnology innovation since the first commercialisation of biotechnology in the USA in the mid-1980s. Material analysed from Silico Research’s database of 22,000 biotechnology-related patents filed at the USPTO indicates that the USA continues to dominate the biotechnology space. In 2006 67 per cent of the inventors filing biotechnology-related patents at the USPTO were based in the USA. The percentage of American based inventors has been steadily rising since 1980 when they made up 52 per cent of the total. By comparison the number of non-US inventors has been decreasing, falling from 48 per cent in 1980 to 33 per cent in 2006.

While American inventors are continuing to dominate the space, the number of countries filing biotechnology-related patents at the USPTO has been increasing, rising from 10 in 1980 to a peak of 44 in 2002. Cross border collaborations have also been steadily increasing over time, rising from 1 country per patent in 1980 to 1.18 countries per patent in 2006.

Outside of the USA, inventors filing biotechnology-related patents are highly concentrated in Tokyo in Japan. The number of inventors from Tokyo listed in the patents rose from 352 in the period 1972-95 to 635 in 2000-06. Tokyo comes highest for the number of inventors filing patents for monoclonal antibody technology and stem cells. Many of the Tokyo based inventors are assigning their patents to pharmaceutical companies such as Kyowa Hakko Kogyo, Sankyo Pharmaceuticals, Teijin Ltd and Daiichi Pharmaceuticals. Inventors based in Osaka come second in the league table of number of inventors per town, numbering 242 in 2000-06. The Japanese city, Ibaraki, which is within communting distance of Osaka and Kyoto, follows closely numbering 225 inventors. As is the case for Tokyo the bulk of the inventors filing at he USPTO are assigning their patents to pharmaceutical companies, including Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Vancouver in Canada had the third highest number of inventors listed by town for all biotechnology-related patents for the years 2000-06, totalling 228. The majority of these inventors assigned their patents to the University of British Columbia. Inventors based in Vancouver ranked second after Tokyo for patents relating to stell cell technology, many assigning their patents to biotechnology companies such as Stemcel Technologies Inc. The high profile of Vancouver in recent years might reflect the fact that in 2004 British Columbia enabled companies to receive a tax refund based on revenue generated from life sciences patents (75%, up to $8 million/year).

China’s biopharmaceutical patent footprint

Since 1997 Chinese based inventors have slowly increased their filing for biopharmaceutical-related patents with the American USPTO, reaching a peak in 2003. While the proportion of Chinese inventors filing for biotechnology-related patents with the USPTO remain small by comparison with the USA and other developed countries, and are behind other emerging countries such as South Korea and India, they have been increasing over time and show interesting geographic concentrations. Silico Research’s analysis of the USPTO database shows that at least 29 per cent of the biopharmaceutical patents filed by Chinese based inventors are being assigned to university and research based institutes. Over 34 per cent of the Chinese inventors filing with the USPTO for biotechnology only-related between 1992 and 2007 were based in Beijing, while 17 per cent were in Shanghai and 16 per cent in the Hong Kong region. Just under 42 per cent of the patents were in the field of antibody technology. The proportion of Chinese inventors who filed patents relating to stem cell technology was low at only 7 per cent.

The high proportion of patents filed by inventors based in Beijing may in part be a reflection of the strength of universities in the city. Many of the Chinese inventors are assigning their patents to universities based in Beijing, including Beijing Medical University, Tsinghua University and Peking University. Beijing is also known as a centre for innovative entrepreneurs and has a large number of high-growth start-ups and Chinese and foreign venture capital firms. Alongside the large construction of facilities for hosting the 2008 Olympic games Beijing is becoming a hub for biotechnology development, with the establishment of the Chinese Biotechnology Center, a new two-million-square-foot project which is set to house key Chinese government agencies as well as biopharmaceutical companies, with a ratio of about 70% to 30% for Western pharma to local traditional Chinese medicine companies.

The strong presence of Shanghai’s inventors in the USPTO database is not surprising given the city’s strength as a financial and trade centre in China, its highly educated workforce and its strong links with the western world. Like Beijing, Shanghai’s also has a large number of important universities, including Shanghai Medical University, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry which are both part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the city. All four of these institutions were listed as having been assigned biopharmaceutical-related patents in the USPTO database. Both the Max Planck and Institute Pasteur have opened outposts in Shanghai, bringing a European academic presence to the place. The city also has the Shanghai Zhangjiang High-tech Park, one of the most successful government sponsored 20 science parks in the country and home to more than 100 domestic and international biopharmaceutical companies and central research organisations. A number of multinational pharmaceutical companies have or are currently setting up research and development centres in the city, including AstraZeneca, Novartis, Roche and Pfizer.

The proportion of inventors resident in Hong Kong filing for biotechnology-related patents at the USPTO is almost as high as Shanghai. Half-an-hour to the mainlaind, Hong Kong is already a well-known international financial and business centre and has a long tradition of strong intellectual property protection. In addition to these assets, Hong Kong is bilingual and the local government is investing $1.5 million to build a Hong Kong Science Park in the area. It is home to Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Hong Kong, two universities which have been assigned a large number of biopharmaceutical patents in the USPTO.

Chinese companies who are listed in the USPTO database as have been assigned biopharmaceutical related patents by Chinese inventors include Capital Bio Corporation, a spin-out company based in Beijing founded in 2000 by Tsinghua University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Academy of Military Medical Sciences specialising in biochips, high throughput screening, disease diagnostics and pharmagenomics; Hainan Life Nourishing Pharmacy Co, a company based in Haikou City focused on developing new compounds; Jiangsu Kanion Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, an ethical drug manufacturer headquartered in Liangyungang City; Nanning Maple Leaf Pharmaceutical Co Ltd which is WEX Medical Limited’s research and development and manufacturing facility based in Nanning; Wex Medical Limited a company with branches in Beijing and Hong Kong which is dedicated to the discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of therapeutics for acute and chronic pain; Shanghai Xing Ling Science and Technology Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, a division of Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group which is dedicated to the development of drugs from natural extracts; and Shanghai Jiao Da Onlly Co Ltd, one of the first healthcare companies publicly listed in China and actively engaged in the manufacture and sales of biological and medical products.

The degree to which the number of Chinese inventors filing for biopharamceutical-related patents at the USPTO in the future remains uncertain. The number of Chinese patents filed with the USPTO could increase with the Chinese government’s increasing investment to entice Chinese scientists trained abroad back to China, such as the setting up of science centres where they can work and the offer of special grants and other incentives. In 2000 slightly more Chinese scientists returned to China than left the country, shifting for the first time a reverse trend, but overall the number of scientists returning remains small. Official Chinese statistics show that in 2005 under a quarter of Chinese scholars trained abroad had returned. The importance of patenting with the USPTO could rise with the lure of selling more and more biopharmaceutical products abroad and the need for the Chinese to show they are serious about the regulation of intellectual property.

India and China’s place in biotechnology innovation

According to the Canadian analyst Veronika Litinski many sizeable biotechnology companies attending the Bio.org conference held in Boston in May 2007 have plans for entering India and China. Both India and China are attractive for biotechnology players because of their large markets, high number of science graduates and low labour costs.

Both the Chinese and the Indian governments are keen to promote biotechnology. Since 2000 the Indian government, together with the private sector, has provided seed funding for biotechnology start-ups and in 2005 drew up a strategy to provide tax concessions, industrial grants and motivate greater patenting and foreign investment. The aim of the policy is to achieve an annual turnover of US$ 5 billion by 2010, reaching annual sales of $25 billion in 2015. Similarly since 2006 the Chinese government has given biotechnology startups priority status for bank loans and grants as well as research and development tax breaks. In May 2007 the Chinese government announced its first five year plan for biotechnology, with the aim of achieving a revenue of 500 billion yuan (US$65 billion) by 2010 and 2 trillion yuan by 2020.

The biotechnology industry is growing in both places. In 2004 the Chinese government reported that its biological product market (gene engineering drugs, vaccines, antibodies, and blood products) was $2.5 billion and was growing 13% a year. Statistics from the Indian government showed that the Indian biotechnology industry grew by 39 percent between 2003 and 2004 to a value of $705 million, and the total investment in the sector had increased by 26 percent to $137 million. In 2006 the Indian Department of Biotechnology indicated that the country’s annual sales for its biotechnology industry was $1.5 billion and that between 2005 and 2006 the total revenue rose by 37.5%. Approximately 70% of this revenue came from biopharmaceuticals.

Despite increasing government promotion of biotechnology and some growth of the industry, biotechnology patenting remains modest in India and China. Silico’s analysis of patents from the OECD (which covers patents from the EPO, JPO and USPTO) in classes 424, 435, 514, 530 and 536 (drugs, molecular biology and microbiology, natural resins or derivatives and organic compounds) indicates that the number of patents filed by Indian and Chinese inventors rose in the years between 1999 and 2005. In India the number increased from 42 in 1999 to 93 in 2005, an rise of 97%. The number in China jumped 121% from 14 to 28. The overall number of patents for India and China, however, remains tiny by comparison with those for the United Kingdom and the USA, which in the same years saw a decline in their patents. The number of patents for the United Kingdom dropped 42% from 583 in 1999 to 339 in 2005, and 39% in the USA from 7788 to 4710.

Silico’s analysis of patents filed (in classes 210, 264, 424, 435, 514, 530, 536, 549, 800) at the USPTO reveals that 60% of the total 746 patents filed Indian resident inventors were assigned to government or research institutions. Of these 51% (n=383) were assigned to the government’s body the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Biopharmaceutical generic manufacturers were assigned 131 (18%) of the patents. Patents assigned to the generics pharmaceutical company Dr Reddy’s constituted the next largest proportion after CSIR totaling 31 (4%). Closely following were Dabur Research Foundation, part of the multinational Dabur Group, with 29 patents and the generics pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Laboratories with 28 patents. Very few biotechnology companies were assigned patents. Panacea Biotec had 15 patents (2%) and Biocon 9 (1%).

Government and research institutes were assigned fewer patents in the case of China, accounting for 68 (28%) of the 228 patents filed by Chinese resident inventors at the USPTO. Of these 34 patents (15%) were assigned to the government bodies the Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and 32 (14%) to universities (Chinese University of Hong Kong, 11 patents; Tsinghua University, 7 patents; Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 5 patents; Fudan University, 4 patents; Peking University, 3 patents, and Beijing Medical University, 2 patents). The companies assigned patents in this space included China’s largest gene sequencing company Shanghai Bio Road Gene Development Ltd (6 patents) founded in 1998; the generic pharmaceuticals companies GenMont Biotech Inc (4 patents), Shanghai Bio Road Gene Development Ltd (4 patents), Jiangsu Kanion Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (3 patents), Nanning Maple Leaf Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, part of Wex Pharmaceuticals (3 patents) and Hong Kong based Bright Future Pharmaceutical Laboratories Limited (3 patents); and the Beijing based genomics company CapitalBio Corporation (3 patents).

There are distinctive patterns for the types of patent filed at the USPTO by Indian and Chinese resident inventors. Patent abstracts containing the word “pharmaceutical” were more prominent among patents filed by Indian resident inventors (n=167, 22%) than Chinese ones (n=33, 15%), as were patent abstracts containing the word “diabetes” which were (n=44) 5% for Indian inventors. The high number of diabetes associated patents for Indian resident inventors may reflect the country’s growing diabetic epidemic. In 2005 the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated India had the highest number of diabetic suffers worldwide, with 33 million people. None of the patent abstracts registered by Chinese based inventors had the word “diabetes”, which is surprising given that China came second after India in the WHO statistics for 2005, with 23 million diabetic suffers. The USA ranked third after India and China with 18 million diabetic sufferers.

The word “DNA” was more common in patent abstracts filed by Chinese inventors (n=32, 14%) than among Indian ones (n=14, 2%). Both countries had very few patent abstracts containing the words “HIV” or “obesity”. China had proportionately slightly more patent abstracts with the word “vaccine” (n=5, 2%) and “cancer” (n=9, 4%) than India where it was 1% for “vaccine” (n=9) and 2% (n=18) for “cancer”.

If patenting is taken as measure of innovation, India and China seem to have some way to go to catch up with other countries such as the USA and Britain in the commercialisation of new innovative biotechnology products and become worldwide biotechnology players.

NDA applications continue to decline

Between 1996 and 2006 the number of new drug applications (NDAs) approved by the US FDA declined by 10 percent, dropping from 289 to 259. Silico Research’s analysis of FDA and USPTO’s databases shows that this fall has been accompanied by a reduction in the number of out-licensed drugs. An examination of a random selection of NDAs in 1996 and 2006 shows that the number of out licensed drugs dropped from 59 to 36 in this period, a decline of 30%.

What explains this decline? An explanation for the decrease in out licensing maybe the growth of mergers and acquisitions over the past ten years. Many companies facing a dwindling product pipeline have resorted to merging with or acquiring other companies as a means of boosting their portfolios. The reduction in the overall number of NDAs approved by the FDA, however, suggests that the strategy to merge or acquire may have undermined rather than increased scientific productivity. This makes sense when the upheaval and changes caused by mergers and acquisitions are taken into account. Scientists need stability in order to be at their most productive. Mergers and acquisitions are by their nature destabilising.

The number of universities licensing their patents for drug development, however, has slightly increased over the past ten years. Just three of the randomly selected NDAs for 1996 had been originally patented by an academic institution. By 2006 this figure had risen to seven. The NDAs approved in 1996 used patents that had been registered in the 1980s, a time when many universities were only just beginning to become more active patentees with the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act (1980) which allowed academic institutions to own the intellectual property associated with discoveries based on federally funded research for the first time.

One of the NDAs examined by Silico Research was the NDA for the HIV/AIDS drug Emtriva. Emtrivacine, the basic ingredient for Emtriva, was developed and patented by Emory researchers in 1995, and partially funded by federal grants. The FDA first approved Emtriva in July 2003 for the treatment of HIV infection in combination with other antiretroviral agents. The drug was then approved as a component of Truvada (emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) in August 2004, and in July 2006 as part of Atripla Tablets, a tablet that could be taken once a day for the treatment of HIV-1 infection in adults which had a fixed-dose combination of three widely-used antiretroviral drugs. In July 2005 Emory University sold its worldwide rights to Emtriva to Gilead Sciences and Royalty Pharma for a one-off payment of $525 million, the largest lump-sum ever paid for university intellectual property.

Four of the seven university patents that Silico looked at for 2006 were originally granted to the University of Missouri. The patents cover the drug Zegerid, a treatment for patients with bleeding ulcers developed by the Jeffrey Phillips, a pharmacologist at the University of Missouri. These patents were licensed to the specialty pharmaceutical company Santarus in 2001 for $1 million.