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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Innovation as Abundant as Patent Diversity Across Local Landscape

A map of San Diego’s more than 15,000 patents issued since 1976 weighs heavily on the La Jolla/Golden Triangle/Sorrento Valley area, and the more than 5,600 pending patent applications follow that trend, according to a search based on patent holders’ home cities.

Local wireless giant Qualcomm Inc. surpassed the other companies, with 1,106 assigned patents and another 2,900 pending. But several thousand of those 15,000 patents are biotechnology, life sciences and medical device patents — with the owners staunchly planted in the Golden Triangle and coastal region, generally stretching from the northern end of La Jolla to Solana Beach.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database covers the dates from 1976 to 2008, and includes patents granted. Summaries of the patents issued in those years can be queried so many ways that results vary widely. For example, some San Diego companies say they’re located in La Jolla — with about 2,000 patents issued to owners in this community — while others say they’re located in both La Jolla and San Diego, making the combined totals untrustworthy.

Even the PTO’s own reporting on those patents is not entirely reliable, according to Stephen Swinton, a partner with the law firm of Latham & Watkins LLP who specializes in intellectual property litigation.

For example, between 2004 and 2008, the PTO reports that about 10,800 patents were held by individuals in California — based on who owned them, rather than who invented them.

“The PTO database isn’t always up to date on assignees,” Swinton said. “The transfers aren’t always current, for example, when someone buys them or after a company goes out of business, or if there’s a merger.”

Biogen Idec Inc., for example, owns just five patents where San Diego is listed as the owner’s home address. The remaining 111 are held by the company in Cambridge, Mass., where the company’s headquarters are located. But results for a search by the term “IDEC” shows the now-merged company as the current owner of 45 patents.

And it’s hard to decipher the geographic center for patents held locally by companies that have headquarters and law firms outside the region or share research across several locations. Pfizer Inc.’s La Jolla laboratories, Roche, Medtronic Inc. and The Regents of the University of California all have people working on both the science and the law in enough locations that the results cannot be tied to San Diego with certainty.

Then there are patent owners on the region’s periphery that are robust players in the local scene. Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Carlsbad holds 805 patents, according to the PTO database. But before you consider they’ve hit a hole in one, remember that its Carlsbad neighbor, Callaway Golf Co., has 957 — and that’s for clubs and balls. (By comparison, Carlsbad-based Taylor Made Golf Co. Inc. has a mere 336 patents.)

Behind-the-Scenes Effort

The number of patents issued doesn’t tell the whole story of innovation and emerging knowledge. Not only does it take a great deal of time to get a patent, but owner and inventor strategies towards protecting ideas vary widely.

“It still takes a fair amount of time to get a patent issued,” said Swinton. “It’s not unusual to have it pending for two to four years.”

Some companies seek patents very aggressively, according to Stephen Ferruolo, a partner with the law firm Goodwin Proctor LLP.

“Patents are tools. You’ve got to be strategic about your patents,” he said. “Isis has been very aggressive. They’re a patent machine.”

Other companies decide that a patent isn’t worth the cost and aggravation, according to Debra Nye, a Foley & Lardner LLP partner.

“Some companies keep things as trade secrets unless they feel the idea is commercially viable,” she said. “There’s a risk with a patent that if you go to enforce it you can end up losing it.”

Many startups and local companies are working with ideas that they have solely licensed from the research institutes or the university which own the patent, Nye said. So they don’t show up as owners of an idea and may prefer to keep their license a secret from potential competitors.

Large Volume of Patents

But even with this extensive list of reasons explaining why the PTO database doesn’t give a full and accurate snapshot, it shows a mountain of patents in San Diego’s biotech community.

For example, San Diego companies hold 1,736 patents in the patent class of “Chemistry: Molecular Biology and Microbiology” and another 625 patents in the “Drug, Bio-Affecting and Body Treating Compositions” class. Among the most recent of these is a method for diagnosing liver fibrosis in hepatitis C patients developed by Prometheus Laboratories Inc.

San Diego companies have more than 5,600 published applications for patents — more than 500 for this year and another 2,100 from 2009. About 566 of those are in the molecular biology class, including GeneOhm Sciences Inc.’s application for highly accurate methods of identifying variants of influenza viruses, including Type A, avian and the H1N1 strains, and Sequenom Inc.’s application to patent a method for genetic testing to identify women who are likely to have breast cancer — an important advance in life-saving early detection and steps past the current use of a single genetic marker.

Both companies are in the scientifically crowded 92121 ZIP code.

Research institutes within the 92037 ZIP code — across Torrey Pines Road from UC San Diego — rank high on patent ownership, where The Scripps Research Institute holds 776, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies holds another 470 and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute has 128, with about 550 patent applications pending between them, according to the database.

Old-timers Gen-Probe Inc., connected to at least 284 patents, and Hybritech, with 35, show up on plenty of patents, but for the most part every life sciences startup probably has one, according to Swinton.

“Every biotech in San Diego either has patents pending or issued because the nature of the beast is it is supported by intellectual property,” Swinton said. “For biotechnology patents, I’d estimate that 75 percent are in the Golden Triangle and 20 percent are in Carlsbad.”

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