Stem Cells Centre of Excellence to set IP rules

A series of meetings will take place this month to set the intellectual property ground rules for the new Centre for Stem Cells and Tissue Repair.

The centre's new chief operating officer Dr Dianna DeVore, who arrived in Melbourne from the United States just weeks ago, said the initial meetings were intended to identify the types of patents each member would bring to the Centre of Excellence.

"We have members who are institutes and members who are private companies, so we have to do an IP assessment to find out what they have and what they can bring to the centre and then go from there," DeVore said.

DeVore, who has a legal background and was previously in the IP division of Elan, conceded that balancing the patent and commercialisation requirements of such a diverse group would be challenging and complicated.

"One of the things that is going to be extremely important is going to be the agreements between the centre and the participating organisations," she said.

The ownership arrangements pertaining to the IP were also yet to be negotiated, she said, adding that they would most likely have to be standardised to remain fair to all members.

"We want to be as fair and reasonable as possible...it would not be fair to have hugely varying terms within the agreements unless there is something different such as the amount or type of IP a member is bringing to the table," DeVore said.

"The real challenge here is to try to keep things as consistent as possible."

She said establishing an IP framework for the centre required a three-pronged approach.

The first, which she has already begun work on, was to determine the landscape outside the centre in terms of freedom to operate.

"This means seeing if any blocking patents exist and, if so, see what we can do to design around those patents," she said.

The second step, to be achieved through the meetings this month, will be to gain a thorough understanding of member IP and how it could impact on that of other members.

The final prong, according to DeVore, will be to decide how to go forward with the IP within the centre itself.

"It is hard to say what the hurdles are going to be because it is not just a 'what comes first; the chicken or the egg?' type of situation," she said.

"We are trying to do both at the same time."