What Does Fish Oil Have to do with Technology Transfer? Anthony Breitzman, Ph.D Federal Laboratory Consortium Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting Rocky Gap Resort,

What Does Fish Oil Have to do with Technology Transfer?

Anthony Breitzman, Ph.D

Federal Laboratory Consortium Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting Rocky Gap Resort, Cumberland, MD

September 13-15, 2005

1790 Analytics, LLCEast Gate Center, Suite 200309 Fellowship RoadMt. Laurel, NJ 08054856-216-1790www.1790analytics.com

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Copyright 2005, 1790 Analytics, LLC

Introduction

Citation Analysis – that is analyzing the citations from later patents to prior art – has been used with some success to identify potential licensees.

For example in the next slide we see that Paratek Microwave, Micron Technology, and Motorola might be interested in licensing the Army’s patent for a ceramic composite.

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A US Army Patent Cited Frequently by Others

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Inc

2002 06492883 06444336 06498362Paratek

Microwave Inc

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Inc

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"Ceramic ferroelectric composite material BSTO-ZnO"

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ear

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Limitations of Direct Citations

• Citation analysis is a valuable tool for technology transfer, but it has some shortcomings:

1. Recently issued patents are ignored.

2. Poor for packaging groups of patents to license.

3. Only a fraction of a portfolio is likely to be frequently cited.

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Reynaud’s Syndrome and Fish Oil

• Don Swanson a Physicist and library scientist had a daughter diagnosed with Reynaud’s disease.

• Reynaud’s patients suffer from intermittent blood flow in the ears, fingers, and toes. At the time (~1985) there was no treatment for the disorder.

• Swanson found a treatment by examining seemingly unrelated literature sets.

– blood- and blood vessel-related characteristics are typical for Raynaud patients: Blood viscosity and platelet aggregability are high. Also, there are vascular reactions such as vasoconstriction.

– Swanson also found that fish oil and its active ingredient eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) lowered blood viscosity and platelet aggregation.

– Numerous papers discussed the connections between Reynaud’s (A) and blood characteristics (B) and another set discussed connections between blood characteristics (B) and fish oil (C) but Swanson using literature based techniques was the first to make the connection between Reynaud’s (A) and Fish oil (C).

• Swanson later used the same techniques to find the previously unknown connection between magnesium deficiency and migraines.

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N-Degree Analysis

• The lesson from Swanson’s work is that indirect connections often provide information and patterns not visible by examining only direct connections.

• 1790’s N-Degree analysis uses this idea to find technologies that are related when there is no direct citation.

• The next figure shows two patents that are closely related.

• Even though the patents have no direct connections, they are fairly close technologically and are commonly cited by 4 patents and commonly reference 10 others.

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N-Degree Analysis Example

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Object oriented programming based global registry system, method, and

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Commonly Referenced

Patents

Commonly Citing

Patents

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N-Degree Analysis Applications

• The N-Degree Analysis solves the problems of using direct citations.

• The previous slide shows 2-degree connections. It is extendable to any degree.

• By weighting the connections: 1-degree = 1, 2-degree = ½ etc., it is possible to find the nearest neighbors of a source patent or set of patents or an entire portfolio. (e.g. patent pairs with a total weight of 5 are technologically closer than those with a weight of 2.)

• Given a set of source patents that you wish to license or donate, it’s easy to find a set of related patents.

• Further, once related patents are found they can be grouped by industry, assignee etc.

• For example it is possible to identify technology developed by the laundry detergent industry that is licensable to a particular company in the semiconductor industry.

• That is, it can be used to solve the difficult problem of licensing non-core technology to industries that may you may be unfamiliar with.

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Contact Information

1790 AnalyticsEast Gate Center

309 Fellowship Road, Suite 200Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054

Tony Breitzman or Chip D’angeloTel: 856-216-1790

[email protected]@1790analytics.com

Documents

What Does Fish Oil Have to do with Technology Transfer? Anthony Breitzman, Ph.D Federal Laboratory Consortium Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting Rocky Gap Resort,