1. Jeff Boily noted the truly unique levels of outcomes-focused cooperation in this region, even among companies that have been competitors in the animal-health sector. | 2. By moving more intellectual property disputes into patent court, as opposed to federal court, resolutions can be achieved quicker, and more efficiently, said Patrick Woolley.

Explained Casillas, “We have already come to the table, looked at each other and said ‘What are our strengths and what are our weaknesses?’ and pre-positioned ourselves so that we can—No. 1—provide optimal solutions for our national security.”

Peter Dorhout, who has recently arrived at Kansas State University by way of Colorado State, finds the environment here conducive to collaboration. “Kansas actually is in a very positive place,” he said, “because higher education often speaks with one voice. We spoke with 14 voices in Colorado.” As a telling example of that problem, he added, “There were times when I felt it was easier for me to collaborate with colleagues at nuclear weapons facilities in the former Soviet Union than it was to collaborate with folks down at Colorado University Medical Center.”

Jeff Boily noted that participants in the animal-health corridor, some of them competitors, looked at the idea of collaboration from an outcomes perspective. The industry came together with the goal of accelerating early-stage research to help “grow the corridor, grow jobs, and give the member companies access to a greater product pipeline. “

“I have not seen this any place in the world,” said Boily, “where everyone is still kind of on the same page, moving forward, and we’re attracting interest literally from around the world.”


Commercialization

Kevin Sweeney asked UMKC’s John Norton, whose Bloch School is well known for its efforts in entrepreneurship, what he was seeing in regard to the commercialization process. “What are we doing right,” Sweeney asked, “and what could we be doing better?”

Norton reported that many would-be entrepreneurs think it is all about securing start-up money. But he believes that ideas must come first. It is important “to start lots and lots of businesses and to start to commercialize lots of ideas.” Bloch’s research has shown them what works, and faculty expose their students to these models. Given that the average entrepreneur will create some 500 jobs in his lifetime, and that Bloch trains 100 entrepreneurs a year, “that’s a big deal.”

With ideas being critical, and knowing that the intellectual property surrounding those ideas creates value, Kevin Sweeney wondered how Washington’s “new intellectual property regime” would impact the regional bio-tech industry.

As Patrick Woolley explained, the new system basically takes cases out of the federal court system and puts them in the patent office where, presumably, they can be managed a lot more economically. “I think you get a better result without spending upwards of seven figures to go try a patent case,” said Woolley. This approach also harmonizes American law with the rest of the world’s, which Woolley believes, is “actually a good thing for our purposes.”

John Garretson generally agreed with Patrick Woolley, but is not quite so bullish on the changes. Garretson thinks we are entering a period of uncertainty. He cited specifically the FDA’s failure to issue guidelines on biosimilars—that is, officially-approved subsequent versions of innovator products. These guidelines were promised by January of last year but have not been delivered.

In addition to the uncertainty, Garretson wondered how the government was going to find several hundred new patent judges to hear these cases. “What it does is put pressure on early assessment of what is your IP” or intellectual property, said Garretson.