Battleground shopping: Big Pharma versus Indian Patent policy

On March 13th 2013, in a hearing before the US House of Representatives, Pfizer's Chief Intellectual Property Counsel Roy Waldron derided India's pharmaceutical patent regime stating amongst other things that India has 'routinely flouted trade rules', discriminating in favour of domestic generic companies, and is abusing the compulsory license system. Waldron went on to recommend that the US government use 'every available bilateral and multilateral fora' and 'review all available policy tools' in order to send strong signals to the Indian government about America's displeasure in India's 'deteriorating intellectual property environment'. (See full written testimony here and our past coverage here). 

While no doubt raising real concerns that Big Pharma has with India's patent regime, Waldron's laundry list didn't go down too well with the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) who came out with a strong letter of their own (available here). Calling Waldron's statement factually inaccurate and misleading, the letter went on to state that while Pfizer may have preferred that India implement TRIPS plus provisions, India is not obliged to implement any measures over and above the minimum TRIPS requirements - which it already is in conformity with. It rebutted Pfizer's four main concerns as well as 'strongly urged' Pfizer to reconsider its recommendations. Both the letters are must reads and are available here (Pfizers statement) and here (IPA's response). I haven't been able to find a copy of it but apparently Pfizer has responded to IPA with another strongly worded letter wherein they maintain that India is running afoul of its TRIPS obligations. 

The no holds barred exchange of words covers is quite indicative of the shift, or rather spread, of 'battle-grounds' that Big Pharma is choosing to use to express their demands. The battle, sometimes against Indian generics and sometimes against Indian patent policy which they view as protectionist, is aimed at ensuring big pharma captures more of the pharmaceutical market in India and across the world. The revenues generated from this are allegedly required to ensure R&D can continue. I say "allegedly" because Big Pharma is notoriously opaque about their accounts. In his letter, Waldron cites the well known 2007 DiMasi & Grabowski study, which arrives at a figure of R&D costs of $1.3 billion per drug. However, the study also has come under the spotlight for methodological deficiencies such as using unverified, industry reported costs from companies for unnamed drugs that they chose. In fact, Light & Warburton, in a critique of the DiMasi study, claim that the figure may be as low as $60 million. 

Now, I also have trouble believing that the figure could be as low as $60 million but Light's paper does seem to raise several unanswered questions. Given that they use the high cost of R&D as a rallying cry, it certainly would do a lot to boost the credibility of Big Pharma's case if they could be a little more transparent about their actual R&D costs. 

Pfizer, which incidently reported a 20.91% increase (to Rs.58.15 crore) in net profits for its last quarter, also stated that due to its 'anti IP' developments', the uncertainty in the Indian market was creating a challenging investment climate in India. The increase in net profits and problematic terminology notwithstanding, it is likely that Pfizer does find the investment climate in India challenging for a number of reasons. However, I'm pretty certain that none of those reasons are, as Pfizer claims, India's alleged non-compliance with its TRIPS obligations. And I'm sure that Capitol Hill's highest paying lobbyists certainly have the resources to get this basic research done. Despite Waldron's recommendation that US use every available bilateral and multilateral forum to push their message, he did not seem keen on using the most obvious one - the WTO dispute settlement mechanism - to decide whether India was actually violating its international obligations. He dismissed this option claiming that it was a 'blunt instrument with unintended consequences'.  Though this only found a few seconds worth of time in the hearing (19:50 - 20:00 here), I found this statement to be one of the most insightful. I find something very hypocritical, and even arrogant, in demanding action that affects millions of lives around the world based on the (dubious) assertion that India is not following its WTO TRIPS obligations -- and then stating that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is a messy instrument to decide whether a WTO member is fulfilling its WTO TRIPS obligations - so US should pursue action against India in other fora. 

Frankly though, my biggest concern with this emboldened manner of lobbying is that in this game of money and lives, it (further) polarizes sides that ought to be working together to find the best way of balancing access and innovation. Ensuring R&D costs are met, as well as ensuring the maximum possible accessibility of drugs are both difficult policy questions that require much insight into a country's domestic needs and international obligations. It may be, and in all likelihood is very true that India's policies, while TRIPS compliant are still suboptimal in terms of balancing access and innovation. On one side, it is clear that simply allowing all generic production of drugs is a very short term solution with serious long term consequences. On the other hand, simply pushing for stronger monopoly rights in India is too large a death sentence for too many patients. Instead of going for each others throats, could the relevant stakeholders start shining light on what the problems with the current 'balance' actually are? Some transparency on the flows of R&D investment? The exact mechanisms of the current incentives and the benefits that flow from them? Sadly, all that being said, the only real solution that I can see is more unlikely but necessary delinkage of R&D cost from the price that patients pay. 

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Social Innovations: A Braille Smartphone

Even as the draft Treaty for the Blind gets watered down and seems to be heading towards a failure (due to "competing" corporate copyright interests), an Indian company Kriyate Design Solutions seems  to be on the road to making more 'every day' things accessible to print impaired people by introducing the world's first Braille smartphone! The difficulties faced by the print impaired is a topic we have often visited on this blog and it's with pleasure we bring you some good news on this front. 

The phone is a haptic user interfaced device which uses a grid of pins that are raised and lowered on the touchscreen, allowing a visually disabled user to communicate with and through the device. Its features include  sending and receiving text messages, having touch based maps 'displayed' on the screen, scanning and converting external text to braille, and even representing externally scanned images - all through raised and lowered pins! This marks a huge step forward for those who have otherwise only had the partial option of relying on modified apps. (For a display of the braille smartphone in action watch the latter half of this video). Kriyate, which means "to do" in Sanskrit certainly looks like it will be living up to its name. 

Kriyate is collaborating with IIT Delhi and LV Prasad Eye Institute Hyderabad to prototype this phone.

The phone which has been three years in the making was the brainchild of Sumit Dagar while he was a student at the National Institute of Design. In December 2012, Rolex selected him for its Young Laureate Program which has boosted his project. The project is now ready for testing. 

As to why he started this project, he says: 

“Technology is giving everyone superpowers, but many blind people are not able to tap into these cool new features, and the technology is making them even more disabled. So I decided to do something that could reach out to this population.”

All this would be pointless if it were not a financially viable option - and here too there seems to be little cause for concern. According to this article, the proposed price of the phone is around $185, or just about ₹10,000 which is well priced even by regular smartphone standards. With about 25% of the world's blind population living in India, this is a very welcome initiative! 

 I wish them all the best as they move forward on this project. 

["Social Innovations" is a new section on SpicyIP where we will take a few lines to focus attention on notable innovations which are development oriented or specifically directed at social causes. This can be grass root innovations, affordable innovations or innovations which meet needs of neglected or marginalized sections of society. We welcome comments on this and would appreciate input regarding any such innovations which we could highlight here ] 

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USTR's Special 301 Process 2013 - India on Priority Watchlist

Image from here

A few years ago, a study done on a certain "of the people, by the people and for the people" governed country revealed that 62% of all its personal bankruptcy filings were due to medical bills. I'm not sure if their situation has since improved (though I hope it has) but it is with some ironic amusement that I read America's latest USTR Special 301 Report advising India on how 'to promote access to healthcare products'. [pg 24]. To be fair though, I haven't read the WTO report they refer to. [Their advice relates to reducing tariffs on medicines and reducing 'burdensome internal charges' and 'regulatory challenges' that can hinder the Indian government’s efforts to promote increased access to healthcare products.]

However, the amusement turned to bemusement when I saw USTR pursuing the interests of its Big Pharma companies (who incidentally were unhappy with the report for not being tough enough) by placing India on a priority watchlist for not following their standards regarding pharmaceutical patents, amongst other things. One can hope that (while certainly corporations are people too), this '... for the people' government is trying to sort out their own (non-corporation) people's medical problems with the same vigour, for, at last check, they were still having plenty of issues with medical bills. 

I say 'with the same vigour', as it certainly takes a lot of vigour to first claim to support the Doha declaration and use of TRIPS flexibilities including Compulsory Licenses [pg 22-23], and then to attack India for pursuing its own healthcare policies while they are well within India's international obligations and the flexibilities afforded by TRIPS. 

Just to back up a bit: What exactly is the Special 301 report? To repeat my description from an earlier post, "it is a unilateral measure taken by the USTR which essentially ranks countries according to how much the US appreciates their IP regimes, and this is used as a kind of [political] 'shaming' mechanism to coerce countries into 'strengthening' their IP regimes to match the TRIPS-plus standards that the US tries to promote." Through the 5 reports that have come out under the Obama administration, the USTR has continued to push developing countries to implement TRIPS plus policies which would limit access to medicines.

Coming back to this year's report:

While dedicating a full 2 pages to India [pg 38, 39], in particular, the report identified the Novartis decision and India's first Compulsory License decision over sorafenib as areas of concern. 

Regarding the Novartis decision: 

"The United States is concerned that the recent decision by India’s Supreme Court with respect to India’s prohibition on patents for certain chemical forms absent a showing of “enhanced efficacy” may have the effect of limiting the patentability of potentially beneficial innovations. Such innovations would include drugs with fewer side effects, decreased toxicity, or improved delivery systems. Moreover, the decision appears to confirm that India’s law creates a special, additional criterion for select technologies, like pharmaceuticals, which could preclude issuance of a patent even if the applicant demonstrates that the invention is new, involves an inventive step, and is capable of industrial application." [pg 38]

As has been mentioned repeatedly, the Novartis decision does not prevent patenting of new uses but instead paves the way for genuine innovation rather than frivolous 'evergreening' - something perhaps that other countries could learn from.  [See Shamnad's elucidation here]

Regarding the IPAB's Compulsory License decision:

In particular, India’s decision in this case to restrict patent rights of an innovator based, in part, on the innovator’s decision to import its products, rather than manufacture them in India, establishes a troubling precedent. Unless overturned, the decision could potentially compel innovators outside India – including those in sectors well beyond pharmaceuticals, such as green technology and information and communications technology – to manufacture in India in order to avoid being forced to license an invention to third parties.

To this, my first response is to question how exactly they define 'respect' when they earlier state:

Consistent with this view, the United States respects its trading partners’ rights to grant compulsory licenses in a manner consistent with the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, and encourages its trading partners to consider ways to address their public health challenges while maintaining IPR systems that promote innovation. 

And secondly to point out that the decision revolved mainly around 'the excessive pricing of an anti cancer drug Nexavar, patented by Bayer'. Quoting Jamie Love in the Huff Post, "by focusing on India's domestic drug production rules, neglected to admit it was trying to force India to accept a $65,000 annual price for a cancer drug."

Also relevant to this is the rather arrogant natured exchange between the USPTO deputy director Teresa Rae and the US Congress on the same issue last year wherein "the Deputy Director of the USPTO testifies before Rep. Bob Goodlatte, in the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property that the USPTO continues to actively try to 'educate' and persuade Indian officials to not grant any further compulsory licenses." Her statement was heavily criticized and later retracted and 'clarified'. See more in my previous post here.

Other issues that the report mentioned India required improvement included increasing TPM protection, increasing criminal enforcement, increased penalties and stronger actions against counterfeit goods.  They also go on to refer to the ACTA and TPP agreements as positive developments - the dangers of which we have written about several times on this blog. [See here for KEI's report on the rest of this year's edition of the 301 report].

All in all, my opinion would be that any legitimacy that they may have hoped to develop through this Special 301 process is slowly getting eroded by the (ab)use of this process as such a blatant tool of representation of corporate America across the world without regard for the public interest in a number of developing countries.

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Open Access: What is it about?

Aaron Swartz's recent suicide has sparked discussion all over the internet, with much of it to do with his  strong belief in the moral imperative of sharing scholarship and making it accessible to all. There's a certain strong raw attraction towards this idea, however, it's practicality is far from a simple matter. It's a rather complicated and nuanced question that needs more serious discussion along with the impassioned cries. I found myself in one of these discussions, (sparked by Shashank Kumar and Tara Van Ho) and thought I'd share some thoughts along with some relevant points that arose in that discussion. We focused on the problems of access to scholarship today as well as the viability of the recommendations such as those of the Finch Report (available here) on Open Access that the UK Government has recently adopted. (warning: long post) 

Perfectly summed up by GB Shaw.
Calligraphy  by Itti

First, the problem: 

Quoting from Swartz, "Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves." And indeed, it is tremendous power. If we lived in a world where information served as currency, every transaction would lead to everyone becoming richer, and one can only imagine what a globalised 'idea economy' would have led to. Idealistic or not, it is unfortunate that this is not our reality. Instead we have a series of proxies which we rely on to encourage, generate and spread this information; and these proxies are far from ideal, leaving several distortions in their wake. 

Attaching property rights as commonly understood to information has serious repercussions  Information, being a public good, is most beneficial when shared. This sharing also allows for organic and exponential growth due to the ever expanding baseline of knowledge that everyone is given access to when an idea is thrown into this pool. Thus, any restriction on this knowledge sharing should normatively be allowed only if there is an appropriate justification. So the question is: Does (temporarily) restricting the spread of scholarship encourage the overall growth of scholarship? Given that (a) the incentives are directed towards publishing companies instead of scholars,  and (b) that the common perception is that these publishing companies add sub-proportionate value to the whole process, scholars and researchers world over are starting to demand a release from the restriction privileges that the publication companies are given. 

Today the crisis in academic scholarship, to be stated simply is that scholarship is not being shared as widely as it could and should be. With the internet, for the first time, there is a super cheap mode of dissemination of scholarship that could make information available to all with an internet connection. Traditionally, publishers have held this role of disseminators, as it was beyond the means of authors to do so themselves. And of course, they also add certain value by organising scholarship as well as providing an idea of the quality of the work.

However, the value that they do not add includes actually reviewing the work (which is done by other researchers peer-reviewing for free) and funding the research being published (often publicly funded - but not subsequently available to the public). Authors provide their scholarship to the journals either for free or by paying a charge to get published. Journals then sell these collected works primarily to libraries/institutes (back to where it came from!), or per piece, to individuals at very high rates. This is despite the rapid transition that many journals have done by jumping on to the digital platform. One would think that this would lead to a drop in prices but this is apparently not the case. The prices remain on par with the former print prices. While introducing an online version doesn't mean online costs don't exist, or that the print prices disappear, it would appear to me that there should be some (substantial) difference in price as some costs have surely gone disappeared. 

In terms of effects on the world of academics: this generally means that those with access to large resources are the ones who can get access to more scholarship. In turn, this means that these are the ones with more opportunities to produce more scholarship. More funding occurs. Cycle repeats. 

What is being discussed the most though, is simply that scholarship is being restricted by journals and sold at artificial prices at the cost of scholarship. As per the Economist: "Elsevier, the biggest publisher of journals with almost 2,000 titles, cruised through the recession. Last year it made £724m ($1.1 billion) on revenues of £2 billion—an operating-profit margin of 36%." And this, even while Harvard is saying that it can't afford journal prices. 

Any hope for this to change?

When one has the requisite resources to buy into these journal subscriptions, one tends to go about his work. When one does not have the requisite resources to buy into these resources, one tends to spend their efforts trying to get hold of what they can manage. So, who spends their efforts at changing this?

Traditionally, this cycle of those with resources continuing to receive more resources, would mean that those without voices, continue to not receive a voice - which they need to even to complain about not having a voice! However, a few factors seem to have combined to start changing this. 

1. With developing countries taking a larger presence on the international stage, large institutes within them, while poor with respect to the large institutes in the developed world, have increasingly been able to communicate their concerns through their governments in the international discussions involving access to knowledge. 

2. Terrific activism by those who have understood the possibilities unleashed with the internet. 

3. The internet has had a remarkable democratization effect, providing individuals all over the world an opportunity to make their voice heard and to hear other voices. Many of these voices have tended to combine under the loosely defined leadership roles played by the above mentioned activists, giving both louder voices. 

4. No doubt, the falling budgets in the developed countries due to the fiscal crisis have sensitized them to prices as well. 

Problems are being raised. And more importantly, they are being given attention and possibilities of solutions to these are being explored. 

Now what? What is the Open Access movement and can it help?

Open Access scholarship is scholarly literature that is provided via the internet and is unrestricted, allowing anyone to access it. In other words, Open Access journals are ones that are not operated based on the reader-pays or subscription-funded model. As for how they are funded - there is active debate regarding the most optimal method. The more popular demand side models include the Article Processing Charge (APC) model, the Advertisement/Sponsorship backed model and the subsidy based models. The more popular supply side models include implementing fees based on (a) Use over a certain free-floor, (b) the supply of literature in convenient formats, and (c) for additional value added. There's a great guide to several supply side as well as demand side revenue generation mechanisms for Open Access scholarship that's been made available by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) here. 

The UK govt has notably dived into the Open Access movement with its acceptance of the recommendations of the Finch Report (available here). It plans on making (wholly or partially) publicly funded research available for free public access from mid 2013 by implementing a mixture of 'Green OA self-archiving' and 'Gold OA' Publishing. Green OA self archiving involves the researchers publishing their research in any journal but also making a post print version of the article available in an appropriate repository without restrictions for non-commercial use within 6 months of publication. The recommendations make clear though, that it is strongly preferable authors take the Gold OA route. If the author chooses to go the Gold OA route, he must submit his article in a compliant journal using a Creative Commons non-commercial reuse license. The Research Council of UK (RCUK) will provide funds to institutions for the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs). The policy also states that all these peer reviewed papers must include details of the funding that went into it as well as how to access the underlying research materials. 

This sounds very public friendly and would be very beneficial for accessing publicly funded scholarship. There could be possible problems following this model though, especially for countries like India. It would appear that until a sufficiently large amount of scholarship has gone open access, they will have to continue to pay for library subscriptions as well, thus doubling spending on both supply and demand side. This may especially be the case if other governments do not pursue Open Access with equal enthusiasm. There are other implementation questions that arise though. On what basis will the govt decide what scholarship to provide APCs for? Will they allot quotas to institutes? If so, this is bound to be problematic as issues of division within the institute, as well as issues of how much each institute gets will arise. Will they simply fund everything? This may be too expensive a proposition. Perhaps the journals could be ranked by a team of experts and only articles selected in journals of a certain quality would be funded? 

There are bound to be plenty of questions and issues which arise while branching out from the traditional model of publication.  However, I certainly view it as a very positive step for global scholarship that the issue of access to scholarship is being taken seriously enough to experiment with new and innovative Open Access models. 

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Aaron Swartz, RIP

See Cory Doctorow's eulogy here

Some of us in India may not have heard of Aaron Swartz, a 26 year old activist who was heavily involved in copyright policy issues and issues surrounding technology freedom. He committed suicide on Jan 11th, 2013 and his story is a sad one which is certainly worth sharing. However, what's also important to note, are the circumstances which may have led his eventual suicide. 

While it cannot be confirmed, it appears that his arrest and indictment for charges of downloading academic papers from MIT and JSTOR resulting in possible jail time of over 50 years and 4 million dollars in fines may have been the cause. JSTOR apparently had dropped the charges, but the US government continued the case and racked up a total of 14 counts of felony against him. (Note: it is unclear whether MIT pursued the charges or not). Clearly he was seen as very troublesome by the government and his online activism must've had a lot to do with that. 

At the age of 14, Aaron had co-authored the "RSS 1.0" specification. He was also part of the original Creative Commons technical team. He later also was a co-creator of the popular social news site Reddit. It was after this, perhaps, that he started catching the governments attention. He saw no sense in the American public having to pay for access to cases which were in the public domain, which was how the PACER system that was in place, worked. Then, "After activists built RECAP (which allowed its users to put any caselaw they paid for into a free/public repository), Aaron spent a small fortune fetching a titanic amount of data and putting it into the public domain. The feds hated this. They smeared him, the FBI investigated him, and for a while, it looked like he'd be on the pointy end of some bad legal stuff, but he escaped it all, and emerged triumphant." 

He went on to found DemandProgress, a group that was very important to the successful protests against the SOPA / PIPA. Cory Doctorow writes a beautiful eulogy here, which goes on to talk more about what he had accomplished in such a short period. While he wrote publicly about his depression, he was a passionate person, who believed very strongly in making information more available to the public. And it appears that following this path angered those who strive to strengthen copyright and closed knowledge systems. 

Aaron had apparently downloaded 4.5 million academic papers after placing his laptop in MIT's halls (of which he was not a student) and accessing JSTOR's database. This is apparently not uncommon at MIT, however it came back to bite him. And certainly, if he did illegally download papers, action should be appropriately taken. However, as Lessig points out in his blog, 'appropriate' is the key word there. In his words, 

"Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured “appropriate” out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the “criminal” who we who loved him knew as Aaron. 

Here is where we need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor’s behavior. From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed."

(Tangential note: just 3 days ago, JSTOR decided to give out over 4 million articles for free.)

"Fifty years in jail, charges our government. Somehow, we need to get beyond the “I’m right so I’m right to nuke you” ethics that dominates our time. That begins with one word: Shame." 

And this is what I think is important for all of us to note. Copyright laws and technology laws,  allegedly for promoting and benefiting society, have become so viciously strengthened and protected that there is continuously disappearing sense of justice in them. Lobbyist powers have no small role to play in encouraging the ever strengthening information regime. And of course, it's no secret that once governments pander to these interests in the domestic arena, they usually carry these on to the international arena as well. ACTA was a prime example of that and the TPP continues to be one. 

Certainly, incentives need to be protected but this cannot be done at the cost of justice. While he was at one end trying to pursue this cause, Swartz also ended up as a victim. 

It speaks of Swartz's passion and attempts for aligning the world with his sense of justice, when someone of Lawrence Lessig's stature writes to Swartz, "We are all incredibly sorry to have let you down". 

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Incentives through Recognition? Nobel Assembly sued for libel and unfair competition

Image from here

Incentives have generally proven troublesome in the context of the intellectual property regime. Right from questioning whether the correct amount of incentives are being given in terms of 20 year exclusionary periods (See for eg, 8th and 9th para of my previous post on Patents and Innovation here), to more fundamental questions of how much, if at all, external incentives are required in the first place. (See for eg, Eric Johnson's paper on IP and the Incentive Fallacy). While the IP regime mostly refers to methods of appropriation of financial incentives, it also in a more limited manner recognizes other incentives such as gains in reputation.

While trying to find panaceas for the laundry list of problems with the IP regime, various forms of the prize system are often touted as the most viable alternatives/parallels to incentivizing innovation. Unfortunately, it appears that prize systems too fall prey to the problems of recognizing and awarding non-financial incentives too. At least, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden seems to be facing such issues. 

One of the world's leading scientists, Dr Rongxiang Xu has recently filed a suit against the Nobel Assembly for statements it made while awarding the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Sir John Gurdon and Dr Shinya Yamanaka in October 2012. The prize was awarded to them for 'showing that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent, with the ability to grow into different tissues in the body'. 

However, apparently Dr Xu discovered regenerative cells in 1984 and "(t)his was confirmed to be keratin-19 positive stem cell after 2000 (US patent 6991813B2) during his study of burn treatments, which has benefited over 20 million burn victims in 73 countries." (See here for source). The suit has been filed in a California court, for libel and unfair competition. 

According to this website, "Dr Xu claimed that his good reputation in the community was defamed by the conduct and the statement published by the defendants (Nobel Assembly). The suit alleges that the Nobel Assembly has been successful in garnering media attention for their Nobel Prize announcements in essentially every major news organizations and publications world-wide, proving that they can affect the perception of an individual by misreporting information." In relation to the award, the Nobel Prize jury stated, "Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop," and "created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy." 

Dr Xu believes that this is detrimental to his own reputation as he already discovered this over a decade ago. He stated, "I am concerned about the statements made by the Nobel Assembly. I seek clarification regarding the issue of 'pluripotency by reprogramming' as it has been incorrectly stated and this can impact the safety of human life. I hope the Nobel Assembly can clarify what its 'pluripotency' means, is it completely conforming with the nature of human life? Or, is it the pluripotency of human cancer cells."

While my knowledge in this area is next to nothing, there's a certain compilation of statements that make this seem very curious to me. Firstly, Dr Xu describes himself as the founder of "human body regenerative restoration science". And then, the Nobel Assembly claims that they have never heard of him (!). 

According to PR Newswire, this is difficult to believe as this would mean the Nobel Assembly not only missed the US patents involved here, but also completely missed his exclusive interviews by Sweden's Ministry for Education and Science and Sweden's national television covering human body regenerative science. They say, 'The Nobel Assembly's lack of acknowledgment is difficult to fathom considering the fact that Dr. Xu has a lifetime achievement in in situ regeneration research and is known worldwide as a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine."

While this may be the first suit against the Nobel Assembly, this is certainly not the first time that the award has been controversial. In fact, we've covered a controversy by the same committee just a few years ago here. Brij Agarwal gives some more examples over here. (And of course, this is without going into the more controversial Nobel Peace Prize awardees) 

Controversy aside, this does raise a question in my mind with regard to incentive structures in innovation policy. If true, this means that for one of the world's most important discoveries, reputation turns out to be a big factor in terms of how the scientist would like to be 'rewarded'! It's no surprise that scientists do a lot of work for peer recognition as well as for scientific curiousity -- but perhaps we should start focusing on how to tweak innovation systems to make more use of these incentives and felicitate them more appropriately.

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'Not just a Trophy Treaty'

Pictured: Surprisingly unempathetic lady of justice
(thus far)

Recently in one of our guest posts, Snigdha Roy made a note of the lack of international consensus towards a treaty that has, for too long, been in the offing. I can't fathom why discussion and debate over the necessity of an international treaty that would essentially give print disabled persons access to the same materials that others have always enjoyed, is something that would take four long years. But such is unfortunately the result when equitable access to information, to printed material that non-disabled people already enjoy, is not on top of the priority list of the powerhouse countries. About how many print disabled people are there? About 285 million. And how much of print material can they currently access due to conversion to accessible formats? About 7% in richer countries about about 1% in poorer countries. 

Print Disability defined: Any person who cannot effectively read print due to any type of disability or handicap is said to be Print Disabled.

Print Disability explained: Imagine you have had the bad fortune to be in an accident which causes your vision to be damaged. Aside from the obvious changes you have to make to your daily routine, you can now no longer access the books, magazines, the internet, etc due to copyright restrictions which prevent them to be changed into a format accessible by you. Should the contents of these print materials be exclusively the privilege of people who are not (currently) print disabled? Apparently, this is something that requires extensive negotiations. 

According to KEI: "The idea for the treaty was first proposed by a WIPO/UNESCO consultant Wanda Noel in 1985, but did not move in WIPO until the World Blind Union (WBU) and other NGOs including KEI proposed a draft treaty to WIPO in November 2008. In May 2009 Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay formally introduced the treaty text where it first meet stiff opposition from the United States and the European Union." 

Those years of negotiation were recently in jeopardy when US (and EU to an extent) continued to oppose the formation of the treaty. However, in the recently concluded WIPO Extraordinary General Assembly, despite US coming in trying to downgrade the status of the treaty, and despite US and EU's attempts to implement a euphemistically termed "safety valve" (read: Kill switch) in the draft treaty, support for the treaty without these terms eventually prevailed. June, 2013, Marrakesh has been set as the date and place for a conference which will have the mandate to "negotiate and adopt a treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities" (pursuant to the draft text in SCCR/25/2). 

As stated by Thiru Balasubramaniam of KEI: 

"Most blind people live in developing countries where there are almost no resources to create accessible copies of copyrighted works. A strong Treaty for the Blind will unlock the large digital libraries of accessible works that are now off limits due to outdated international copyright rules. The agreement today provides new hope for the millions of blind and visually impaired persons that they will have expanded access knowledge and culture. WIPO will now be seen to be doing something positive for human rights. The decision to hold a diplomatic conference on the Treaty of the Blind is a clear victory over the opposition by among others, the US, the EU and France, who were insisting on publisher and movie industry demands that the treaty be blocked, weakened and or narrowed."

There has been substantial watering down of the draft since it was first prepared by the World Blind Union. And even now, while there is significant consensus, there are still differences on questions of commercial availability of accessible works, and how exactly cross border transactions will take place. EFF notes that the main beneficiaries are still optimistic though. 

We will keep our fingers crossed till June. Hopefully the print & media lobbies in the richer countries will not be able to topple over any concepts of basic justice till then. 

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The Hindu & KEI

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Meeting on the Future of the Internet - Mired in lack of transparency

Level of Transparency these days depicted above

Why is transparency such a difficult proposition nowadays? It seems to be constantly popping up as an issue in nearly any large bureaucratic process. There are only two possible answers of course - either a belief that true democracy (which requires information as a basis for choices) is untenable as a governing mechanism, or that democracy is undesirable to those "leaders" unwilling to conduct transparent proceedings. I would lean towards the latter. For those more interested in the reasoning behind this, I've written another post here on a concept called 'the iron law of meritocracy' that may be relevant. Anyhow, I digress from the purpose of this post and that is point out that the future of the internet is now being discussed and possibly decided behind closed doors in the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) from Dec 3rd to Dec 14th, 2012. 

It may be redundant to stress the importance that the internet has made in the world today, as anyone reading this is likely to have a very healthy appreciation of the tremendous role the internet has played in leveling the field for information spreading, opinion sharing and ability of dissenting voices to be heard and recognized. Yet, even aside from the direct role that the internet has played, it has also had cascading effects, much like a vaccine for an eradicated disease which has benefitted generations of people aside from the ones who've been given the vaccine. The reason that it has been able to play such a large role is the unregulated and decentralized nature of the internet. Of course, the infrastructure behind it and optimizing it's spread and growth may require some regulation, but it is important to not let this be the disguise under which the internet itself is controlled. About a decade ago, a group of 4 engineers in Microsoft wrote an impressive, almost 'prophetic', paper entitled "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution" on how the growth of a network system such as the internet would ensure that information continues to spread at a increasingly faster rate as technology grows, regardless of attempts to restrain it, due to it's inherent decentralized nature. Whether this continues to remain true remains to be seen. 

An agency of the UN known as "International Telecommunication Union" (ITU) is hosting the WCIT to go over and revise the decades old International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) which govern standards and regulations for information and communication technologies. The ITU, as noted by Wired, does a lot of important work, such as "sets spectrum and technology standards, has done much to improve global interoperability and efficiency, and helped increase access to information and communication technologies in developing nations." Having said that, the preparatory documents to the important  upcoming meeting have been very secretive, with only member governments and a few other parties being given access rights. Some leaked documents have made their way out though and have shown to be potentially very worrying as they include proposals for restrictions on online privacy, free expression, access to information, and ICT use around the world. 

Civil society, of course, quickly banded together and proceeded to draft and sign into documentation their concerns of the effects this would have on human rights (available as a petition here, do check and sign if you agree), to which the ITU secretary stated, "WCIT-12 is not in any way going to be challenging Article 19, or indeed any other article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". While a mere statement seems to hardly address the concerns, if true, it doesn't explain the lack of transparency or the high barriers it takes to join the proceedings ($2,000 - $35,000 annual membership costs). These high barriers leave out some of most important stake holders in the whole process - civil society and human rights organizations. Not to mention that the current process is giving all power to governments, when we currently have governments of the most powerful democracy (USA) and the largest democracy (India) occupying spots 1 and 2 respectively on Google's list of user surveillance requests - an indication of clear disregard for information privacy and freedom of speech. Yes, the country with the most power in the ITU, is also the one that is number 1 by a large margin in Google's list. How much confidence does that inspire in the decision making process of the ITU? I can't claim to be very convinced, especially when what is required for true growth from here is more power to other voices from around the world and not more centralization. 

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, we will be able to say that the Internet is still as mobilizing as it has been thus far. 

For those interested in following more on this, you can check out the following:

A recent event by Stanford "Is this the End of the Internet"(video), 

Google's Take Action page, 

The WCIT Leaks page 

CDT's analysis of the key proposals

As well as the petition mentioned above. 

(Thanks to Kruttika for the links)

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SpicyIP Tidbit: RSC puts forward excellent US Copyright analysis; gets retracted next day

On Nov 16th, in a little over 8 pages, Republican Study Committee (RSC) staffer Derek Khanna put forward a succinct and accurate report on US Copyright laws, its problems and some policy solutions. About 24 hours later, the RSC issued a statement saying that they were retracting the policy brief as it had been published without adequate review and failed to meet their standard for publication. 

(As per wiki page, "The Republican Study Committee [RSC] is a caucus of over 170 conservative members of the Republican Party in the United States House of Representatives." Thus it is certainly no lightweight in terms of policy recommendations.)

The study, referred to by Ars Technica as 'shockingly sensible', is titled "Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it" and is US specific, but it directly responds to the copyright expansionist attitude that is occurring all over the world while still maintaining that copyright law is essential.

The '3 main myths' it reveals are: 

1. The purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content

2. Copyright is free market capitalism at work

3. The current copyright legal regime leads to the greatest innovation and productivity

Khanna then gives 5 examples of ways that the regime is hurting innovation and progress, followed by 4 policy recommendations to fix the mess. They 4 recommendations essentially are reforming statutory damages, expanding fair use, punishing false copyright claims, and heavily limiting the terms for copyrights and creating disincentives for renewal. 

It's a pity that it was taken back so quickly, showing a lack of interest, (at least from the leadership), in taking criticism of the copyright system seriously. Ars technica also reports, unsurprisingly, that a source said that content industry lobbyists pressured RSC leadership to repudiate the the memo. 

The 8 page report is worth a read and has been made available by Infojustice here. 

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (November Week 4)

Another relatively quiet week in the IP world has passed us as we go deeper into holiday season. Having said that though, there have been a few very notable developments in this last week.

Starting off, in what is definitely the highlight this last week, is the 5-6 hour hearing that Prof Shamnad Basheer received as an academic intervenor over a 2 day period in the much highlighted Novartis case presently before the Supreme Court. As Prashant writes, 'His arguments (as expected) were logical, uncluttered, and with a delightful sprinkling of anecdotes and examples.' The submissions can be found here (Part 1) and here (Part 2); and the summary can be found here. 

Prashant then took us through the dangers that granting ex-parte interim injunction may entail by pointing out flaws and questions in the granting of certain patents in the case of Issar Pharmaceuticals v. Vinod Dua. After noting that details of 2 of the 3 patents involved are not even accessible on the  patent office website, he proceeds to point out some serious doubts as to the reasons for granting the 3rd patent in the first place. Prima facie, it appears that this patent is not valid, yet, an interim injunction against the accused has already been granted. 

Kruttika then takes us through a very well analysed judgement in Star India v. Piyush Agarwal, wherein the Delhi High Court looks into the question of whether the Copyright Act prevents the defendants from updating their users on the score and fall of wickets through text messages even though exclusive 72 hour media rights are given to the plaintiffs. The court says that information from the broadcast falls within the public domain and is not protected by the Copyright Act, thus allowing of communication of this information to the public. In what Kruttika refers to as the "Maggi rule", it also determined that the prescribed "period... by which the information can be no longer be said to be part of or so intimately associated to/with the first right of the broadcast of the plaintiff" is 2 minutes from the time of broadcast. 

On other news, Bangalore based Environmental Support Group (ESG) has finally decided to take action against the Union of India, the National Bio-diversity Authority, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, and others, by filing a public interest litigation for the non-prosecution of Monsanto's Indian subsidiary, Mahyco. 

Prashant has covered the issues that ESG seeks to prosecute on as well as his thoughts on their their likelihood of success. He also notes in a follow up post that some 'press-release journalism' has been happening over at Times of India. As he says, "I was amazed to notice that the entire news report in the Times of India, on ESG’s PIL, was a word for word reproduction of the press release put out by ESG, save for the last two and a half paragraphs of the press release which were not reproduced in the ToI report. The ToI report can be read over here and the ESG press release can be read over here." 

Following this came the big news that Ms Prathiba Singh, founder of Singh & Singh, has been recognized as the foremost female IP lawyer by the Asia Women in Business Law Awards, celebrated by the Euromoney Legal Media Group, which also publishes Managing IP. The entire list can be accessed over here. We congratulate Ms Prathiba Singh on this terrific achievement. 

Prashant then brings our attention to a recent Madras High Court decision in a case brought by copyright owners in 'Dhammu' and '3' against 15 ISPs regarding the issue of whether the ISPs would be protected under the 'safe harbour' provisions in S.79 of the IT Act, from having to comply with the John Doe orders. Justice Chandru shot down this argument, as well as arguments against the legality of 'qua timet' actions, the non-joinder of essential parties, and the legality of John Doe orders. Thus giving a victory to copyright holders. 

Finally, in another cricket based issue, Shouvik discusses the BCCI's attempts at closing out photo press coverage of the on-going India-England test series. International News Agencies have risen up together against this move and have threatened to boycott their coverage of the series. It seems to me to be a ridiculous move by the BCCI and a clear attack on the freedom of media to report on such sporting events. Even the high profiled International Olympic Committee, notorious for being extra stringent with it's IP rights, have condemned the move by BCCI. 

International Developments

On the international front, World Health Organization members have gotten together at WHO's headquarters this week to look past the current patent system and conduct an open ended meeting to analyse the feasibility of new models for financing research and development for diseases lacking sufficient market incentives and public policies.

Meanwhile, IP Watch also brings us the good news of WIPO's close approach to the adoption of a treaty for providing copyright exceptions to the visually impaired. This has taken about 2 years of negotiation so far. Though the developed countries have expressed satisfaction with the terms so far, the developing countries seem to have mixed reactions to the progress, though they have said that countries have come to the table with good faith and have shown flexibility. 

Over at the USPTO, some lingering rumours have proven to be true when a source inside the PTO confirmed that USPTO Director David Kappos will be stepping down from office in January 2013. I can't claim to know much about the workings of the USPTO, but IP professionals across US have expressed regret over his parting from the USPTO. According to Dennis Crouch, Deputy Director Teresa Stanek Rea will likely be nominated into more permanently position after Kappos leaves. 

A topic often relevant but not discussed in detail has been written about by Neil Wilkof in his post on Patent Valuation over at the IP Finanace blog. He looks into some questions that I've pondered over myself - regarding how companies, especially those at the brink of bankruptcy (think Kodak), can value their assets as high as ~$2.6 billion dollars. It's an interesting read and I would personally like to see more discussion around IP Valuation. 

And that seems to wrap up a rather quiet week on the international front! Let us know if we've missed something. We look forward to receiving comments about any of our posts and/or the international highlights.

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Part I: IPCheckups & Intellectual Ventures: What are they about?

Intellectual Ventures (IV) is a private company that is quite often heard about in the IP community. 

As per it's wiki entry, "Intellectual Ventures is a private company notable for being one of the top-five owners of U.S. patents, as of 2011.[1] Its business model has a focus on developing a large patent portfolio and licensing these patents to companies. Publicly, it states that a major goal is to assist small inventors against corporations. In practice, much of their revenue comes from licensing patents from other corporations and then filing lawsuits for infringement of patents, a controversial practice known as patent trolling."

Intellectual Ventures has caught the attention of much of the IP community for a variety of reasons, including the above, as well as including it's secretive patent ownership strategy. In the linked article, Patently-O states that IV may even be the world's largest patent holder, although they have not been very public about which patents are actually in their massive patent portfolio. According to a recent article by CNET, entitled "Inside Intellectual Ventures, the most hated company in tech", Nathan Myhrvold, and other executives of IV defend it by saying that critics simply don't understand what they're doing. The critics they speak of, probably include those such as Mike Masnick at TechDirt, who  thinks it is a 'dangerous, innovation harming monstrosity'. Certain types of Non Practicing Entities (NPEs) are often viewed quite controversially in patent circles. 

Thus, when a couple of weeks ago, we heard of a patent analytics firm, IP Checkups which claimed they were looking to unearth and make public the details of Intellectual Ventures' patent portfolio, like much of the patent community, we were very interested in what their plan was. Transparency is always something that we've appreciated and strived for on this blog. So we decided to look further into it. 

News of their ambitious project, titled Case IV Thicket was reported in several sources including a WSJ writeup here. Interestingly, they have taken a novel crowdfunded approach to collecting the funds to complete this project. Surprisingly, they have not received as much backing as I would've expected them to, given the amount of questions that come up in regard to IV. For those willing to consider involving themselves in this, please check their indiegogo page here -> http://www.indiegogo.com/iv-thicket. 

At the same time, we wanted to hear what IV had to say about the queries into their company. Fortunately, we were able to get a good deal of information from both sides, and present them to you in this post and the next! 

I had a very informative meeting with Matthew Rappaport, founder of IPCheckups, and although much of it is paraphrased, I have listed in Q&A format what he had to say regarding their project. (Some crucial bits are in the 2nd question!). 

After that, in Part II , I have listed the answers given by the International Marketing Director, Intellectual Ventures, Nicholas Gibson to the questions I sent him. Although I have heard quite often that IV has been very hard to speak with, I must say that IV was very forthcoming when I contacted them. 

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Swaraj: There seems to be a lot in the recent news regarding IPCheckup's plan of looking into Intellectual Ventures and what they're doing. Could you tell us a little bit about this? 

Matthew: Certainly. We don't have a problem with what IV is doing. It's a viable business model and serves the patent community quite well. They believe in innovators and patent owners. We do too. We're not an anti-patent group, we're pro-patents. The reason we're doing this is for transparency. Being able to see what a company owns helps to create more efficiency in the markets and more certainty for investors. Our customers, like most patent owners and investors, like certainty. We're a patent research firm, so searching for the patents that Apple or HP have bought gives us a quick view of what they own. 

In the case of IV though, they claim to have a portfolio of 40,000 patents, but a search reveals only about 3-4000 patents. The rest are almost impossible to find, because you'd need to know the names of the shell companies. This makes it difficult for potential licensors as such information helps determine the price for the license. 

Swaraj: IV allegedly has over a 1000 shell companies. How do you plan on tracing them back to IV? 

Matthew: When TechDirt covered this story, they suggested that it would be smart for us to release some information or data before hand, so as to encourage belief in ability. We think its a good suggestion and are incorporating it. So we'll explain a bit of what we plan on doing, and will also be releasing some information that we've discovered already. 

To start off with, we've searched the US re-assignment database for IV patents. This brings up a few 1000s of patents that were owned by others and re-assigned to IV. Then we can see who they've done deals with, patent attorneys, agents, etc... the people involved. If we look at the file wrappers, we could look behind the scenes, sometimes discovering some of the strategies. We look at the litigations to see which law firms have been involved, etc. We take note of all this information and data. 

The 2nd thing we did is we took a couple of the alleged shell companies. One being RoseBush LLC and the other being Purple Mountain server. We looked up the corporate addresses of those organizations from the web, and then did a search on the re-assignment database for those addresses. We found 1000s of patents assigned to other companies at those addresses. That then gave us about 5 or 6000 US patents re-assigned to these organizations. So the idea would be to start to research these organizations, who's involved and are they related to the others, etc. 

Example. We looked at who was listed as an inventor on multiple IV patents, this guy called David Martin Monroe. When we looked at the patents, the address was this address in Las Vegas. This was the same inventor of one of the patents that we found associated with one of the (shell) companies that it was re-assigned to, (that we found from the initial step we did), called 'Ayschogh Visuals'. Basically there's an inventor that's shared between IV and Ayschogh, and the address of RoseBush has the same address as Ayshogh. We looked a little deeper and looked at the actual patent and the re-assignment data, and found that Ayschogh visuals has another address in Los Altos, and that address was the same as the same address of Purple Mountain Server! 

So it's like a web of connectivity and we're trying to untangle this complex web and the manner in which this web was created. Distributing this data for free is a big part of what we're doing, but we also want to help untangle this web, so that other companies, people, academics, etc can understand the nature of how complex and probably very expensive method of capturing data and capturing patents and putting them into shell companies was created. Thereby putting transparency into not only the actual shells, but also the process. 

Perhaps other large corporations have also started to create their own shell companies, and in a short while, there's suddenly this whole underground patent holding universe that's just populated by shells and no one knows who owns what. We can see how that's advantageous to patent owners, but it also brings a lot of uncertainty. 'Who's suing me? Why are they suing me? Who's going to call me for a license? etc' These are questions that all companies should be asking before investing their own or anyone else's money in projects. 

Swaraj: I think it's a great idea, what you're doing. But playing the devil's advocate, do you think that this might drive companies to hide their dealings even further underground? 

Matthew: It's a double edged sword of course. Will it drive it further underground? Or does it mean that because we're unveiling the way it's being done, people may think that if IV's methods can be unveiled, perhaps theirs can as well. Remember, it's not cheap to be doing this - Registering companies, paying taxes, the whole infrastructure thing. Why play cloak and dagger games? Why not just come out and show people what you have and try to legitimately sign up licenses? 

Our perspective is that bringing this out in the open will make it more likely that when I see their portfolios, I will be more likely to call them up and ask for licenses - rather than thinking 'hey, it's some small company in Nevada that we can't find anybody at, forget it'. So we think it would drive more business since it would encourage more licenses, since they're being more upfront about what's going on. 

Swaraj: I would tend to agree with your perspective, but one can't really predict these things

Matthew: Clearly Nathan and these other people are very smart people. They've made calculations and it's fine, they can do that. But we're trying to empower the crowd and level the playing field. 

Swaraj: I've heard that once the project is completed, you may be giving different levels of disclosures to different sponsors. Could you expand on that? 

Matthew: That's a good question. When we started the project, we thought we would provide all the data for 5 years publicly. As it evolved, we had feedback from people asking how we can have it both ways - going for transparency but not providing all the data (ie, the data prior to the last 5 years). What will you do with the rest of it, etc.
After this feedback, we've changed the scope of the project, and will be giving all of it for free now, so everyone gets the same thing. If you give extra money though, you'll get access to our sister company's CleanTech Patent Edge database, a separate product that we sell. That's a database of 1.5 million patents related to clean tech, thats categorised 150 different categories. So you get a certain amount of access to that database, rather than anything special for the IV data, which will just be out for free.

Swaraj: So there's no connection between the IV data and the CleanTech data?

Matthew: The only connection is that some of the patents in the CleanTech Patent Database will be owned by IV, but that's the same for any industry. All the IV patents data will be published for free for anybody. 

Swaraj: I was looking through the CleanTech website recently, and saw that by they said they were slightly surprised by so few NPE-owned patents in clean technology. 

Matthew: Yeah, there were only about 1200 clean technology patents owned by NPEs. It makes sense because the value of clean tech patents to NPEs is somewhat limited, because markets aren't that big. So NPEs don't have products to trade, don't have technologies to cross-license, etc. So for them, the most appealing places to go are where the biggest markets are. As clean technology evolves and grows, there will be more involvement. 

Swaraj: Could you talk a bit about why you've gone for crowd funding for this project? 

Matthew: We didn't want to go for corporate partners because then we might not have been able to give it out for free. There has been some talk about us having relationships with IV. We don't. We don't receive funding from them or any NPEs. We've never raised venture capital money.We thought this would be equitable and fair for everyone. We're trying to do the right thing for the community. Of course there is some benefit to us, in that we will get some publicity and more credibility to us. But in exchange for that we're willing to give out this resource for free. Also it's exciting and we haven't seen anyone combining crowdfunding with IP research, so when we came up with the idea, we thought it would be a neat project. 

We're confident that people will step up. But if we aren't able to pull up enough money, it suggests that there isn't enough interest. Maybe people aren't willing to put their necks out and step up and publicly announce their support for the project. People have told me off the record that they like the project, but are scared of future implications - "If I put money into this, does it suggest that I am anti NPEs, or anti-IV?".
We're not doing this to destroy anything. We think its building more opportunities for people to come to agreements through licensing rather than litigation. 

A lot of people have wanted to cover reports of the project and there's more exposure now. If people know about this, and we've done what we can... if people still aren't interested in this, then it suggests that big companies who can benefit from this, and small/medium companies... it's not enough on their radar. That said, there are different reports out there being sold for up to 10,000$ currently. 

Swaraj: You've received some negative feedback from some people including one Tom Ewing who has made his own report on this which he sells to companies. How have you responded to negative feedback? 

Matthew: We saw a blogpost by him saying that he's offering his data to anyone who's being sued by IV for free. We think that's fantastic and very generous of him. We understand he's spent a lot of time developing and getting this data and he's charged for it and he wants to get paid for it. He's said he wants to partner with someone on a non-exclusive basis to buy the data .. We've contacted him to see if we can work together but haven't heard back from him. I think there was a perception in the article that we got access to his data, but just to clarify, we didn't, we haven't seen his data. We know that he's out there, but we wouldn't want to use his data at all and unless he wants to work with us and offer the data up to the community, we'd want to do it ourself. 

Also, by having a free resource out there, it wouldn't replace the paid reports. The attitude (from bigger companies) would probably be that 'here's the free version that these guys did for $80,000, let's verify this with the paid version'. 

Again, our goal is not to shut anyone out of business. It is to support innovative companies creating products and to put a resource out there to to help bring transparency and level the playing field. 

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(See IV's Q&A session in the following blog post)

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