These days, people are piling up to see the last bright colors of autumn. Almost all products developed with biotechnology and chemistry are protected by one or more intellectual property rights (IP) instruments. B as patents, hardware transfer agreements and trade secrets. The royalties that the takers must pay for the sale or use of these products may vary considerably depending on how the products are used and the relative bargaining positions of the takers and licensees at the time of the development of the product licensing agreement. In addition, most biotech products are manufactured using one or more patented research instruments, each of which can meet licensing requirements; Obligation to pay for the sale of products manufactured using the research instrument, while the patent holder does not have a patent on the manufactured product. This type of requirement should not be confused with patent abuse that could result in a breach of antitrust rules1. These fees may be related to a product identified by a proprietary search tool that requires the use of several different patented technologies owned by several different companies. When stacking the clover, make sure it can rain properly. Health and agriculture ip managers must address royalty and royalty issues that are stacked on almost every product or technology they seek. The purpose of this document is to highlight some of these issues, to explain competing interests and to comment on practices that can be adopted. The following example is an example of case law that defines stacking: almost all products that have been developed using biotechnology, genetic engineering and chemistry are technologically complex and contain many different inputs. While this complicates research and development efforts, there is also the additional complexity of potentially relevant ip rights (IPEs) held by third parties and related to these inputs.
For example, for a new vaccine, research and development may have used many inputs with third-party ownership rights: research tools, recombinant techniques, DNA sequences, transformation vectors, cell lines, adjuvants and distribution devices. Therefore, if the vaccine is finally operational, it will likely be subject to obligations to many licensees. This dilemma of several royalties is called stacking royalties. This occurs when different licenses are combined to impose aggregate royalty obligations of 6% to 20% (or more). Royalty packaging, a similar situation in which several technologies are grouped together (for example. B, several vaccine packages), is sometimes imposed by the licensee or by best practices within a sector or ministry of health. The resulting aggregate royalty problem is the same as when the royalties are stacked. There are several techniques for stacking royalties and managing packaging: licensing fees caps, land royalties, variable royalties and spare royalties (flat payments and patent pools). Licensing stacking and packaging are serious licensing issues that any organization involved in IP management and technology transfer can and must plan and manage proactively and preventively.