After the 2021 public biotech market shakeup, life science investment dollars may be shifting. The past few years have seen a crowded investment market, with both veteran life science investors and new opportunistic investors getting in on the groundswell, especially in the case of IPOs.

In 2021, many of these transient investors cleared out when the bottom finally dropped out. While this investor exodus has been tough for pre-clinical and Phase I startups hoping to go public, steadfast VCs and other biotech investors have the flexibility and wherewithal to weather the froth coming of the IPO market . Comparing 1Q22 to a year earlier is revealing: only nine came in the first three months of 2022 versus 33 IPOs in 1Q21.

So, how will investors wield this new-found freedom? Some signs point to early-stage opportunities as a good destination for their dollars.

Demand for biotech IPOs still weak

One factor pushing investors away from later stage biotech is compressed exit opportunity – either through acquisition or IPO. The fervor for biotech investment carried over from 2020 drove the overvaluation of biotechs going public at all technology stages, leading to a poor post-IPO performance from 2021’s public crop. This trend has shaken confidence in the ability of biotech IPOs to yield returns and has caused all except dyed-in-the wool biotech VC investors and strategics to hang back. While there

is a continued supply of biotechs at the age and stage to go public (approximately 75 companies have SEC registrations ready), there is simply not enough demand for those IPOs currently.

While companies considering an IPO do not all necessarily boast technologies in advanced clinical trials, there is certainly a correlation between technology maturity and propensity for IPO. As a result, those in late-stage clinical work with technologies closer to market may feel the pressure of a slumped IPO market more acutely than less mature firms, primarily because of their cost structure.

With the XBI still leveling out at about half its highwater mark of a year ago, investor confidence in the biotech market will take time to recover. So, it may be a while before capital flows back into public biotech markets to enable the consistent exit environment of last year.

Though the valuations won’t be as lofty as in 3Q21 without the “crossover” or pre-IPO investors, late-stage biotechs can nonetheless seek financing from seasoned VCs, eager to put their money into more reasonably priced deals, and fund the significant

C-rounds needed to support these larger, more mature biotech firms.

Late-stage acquisitions few and far between

The other exit path for late stage biotechs, acquisition by big biopharma, is showing very little activity currently. At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January 2022, big pharma such as BMS, Novartis, Pfizer, and Roche indicated their preference for smaller, ‘bolt-on’ deals with small- to mid-size companies rather than large, capital-intensive M&A deals. Smaller deals allow big biopharma to leverage the target’s unique expertise, whereas value added from large, late-stage biotech acquisitions may be not as substantial because of acquirer overlap with the target’s skills.

Moreover, the hawkish tone of the FTC since 2021 has indicated that the coming years could see increased scrutiny on large deals. While the Pfizer completed the acquisition of Arena Pharmaceuticals,  the waters of large-scale acquisitions remain untested. These factors may make the ‘exit via merger’ route harder to come by for a large share of later stage companies..

Could VCs and strategic investors shift focus upstream to earlier-stage biotech?

Given biopharma’s currently small appetite for late-stage acquisitions, the focus on earlier-stage biotech is coming from both strategic investors and life science VCs. And that’s not a bad thing, as it will avoid putting more pressure on the large number of biotechs that went public in 2021 whose shares trade below their IPO price. An investor shift toward earlier-stage, private-market opportunities where those companies remain private longer will give public biotech markets time to recover. Meanwhile, companies spending time to create real, milestone-based value, will be in a position for an exit either via industry acquisition or through a solid, facts-based IPO story.

Moreover, looking backwards to early-stage companies could help investors find more potent contenders to face the now-crowded startup scene. The IPO enthusiasm of 2021 weakened the winnowing process for biotechs and led to an environment with too many companies, with similar, poorly differentiated technologies. Backtracking to earlier stage opportunities could help investors find technologies with the potential to leapfrog the current generation rather than ones providing only incremental improvements.

Rising interest rates could interfere

While a new focus on earlier stage companies seems to be a natural shift, factors like current events and high inflation, which add uncertainty to the market, may intercede. Investors expect the Fed to push interest up rates several times over the coming months to fight inflation, projecting interest rates six more times over the year. These higher interest rates work against longer term, riskier investments while pushing investors into safer markets. However, the magnitude of this effect on current markets is unclear as of yet.

Takeaways: Early stage biotechs could be the winners of 2022

Despite the difficulties of 2021, life science investors are fueled up and ready for

another round. Already in the first quarter of 2022, VC funding reached almost $8 billion, which is higher than all of the last three quarters of 2021. Many of these funds are explicitly set for new venture creation or early stage technologies, such as Atlas Venture’s recent $450 fund geared toward generating new biotechs from existing and new creators. Other players are also making their plays in the early-stage biotech market – including corporate VC such as Fujifilm, which has set up a small new fund of $60 million explicitly for early-stage companies and in modalities like cell therapy.

With the intensity of the current market downturn, factors pushing investors towards earlier stage companies are also strong. Namely, the lack of exit opportunities for later stage companies, either by IPO or acquisition, could cause capital to shuttle rapidly up pipeline. The recently churned market may yield exciting opportunities to a fresh generation of early-stage tech in 2022.

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Last month saw the publication of WIPO’s new bi-annual IP report, entitled “The Direction of Innovation”. The report is packed with insights, bringing a combination of powerful observations that really hit home backed by data-driven analysis that look deeply into how and why innovation flows.

A key perspective of the report points to the split of economic benefits which go to society (social benefit) vs. returns to private sector investment (private benefit). Spoiler warning: a clear example is the lightning-paced work occurring from the time Chinese scientists sequenced and released the mapping of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in January 2020, to Covid-19 public vaccinations – barely a year later. While many may point to big pharma’s eye-popping profits, the WIPO report shows that the quantifiable portion of the economic benefits to society are roughly 900x those of the revenue earned by the private sector!

The best laid plans… how global crises affect innovation ecosystem participants

On 7 April 2022, WIPO’s IP and Innovation Ecosystems Sector (IES), hosted a short conference to present summary findings of the report, accompanied by a lively panel discussion. Marco Alemán, head of WIPO’s IES, introduced the key concept of how dependent major innovation outcomes are on the influence of each participant in the ecosystem: nations, institutional scientific and engineering research, and private sector investment. However, major events beyond the control of public policy makers shape outcomes, usually via crises, such as war, pandemic and natural disaster. Those crises have enormous impact on research and innovation outcomes. Look at how penicillin development rose in direct response to battlefield infections.

Reflecting academia, industry & government, panel’s views on setting of the direction of innovation

In introductory remarks and presentation of the panelists, Dr. Carsten Fink, head of the IES Department of Economics and Data Analysis, provided illustrations of the change in pace and focus of innovation since the industrial age. As society made its lunge forward in technology in the 20^th century, it did so in recognizable big waves, i.e., engine/transport > pharma > ICT > digitalization, today.

And some funny things happened on the way to the IP forum. A most recent example is digital-related innovation: it has grown 172% faster than all patents over preceding five years.

Lively panel discussion

Introducing themselves and their work, each panelist drove home the reality of innovation acceleration. The panelists included Victor Aguilar, Procter & Gamble’s Chief R&D and Innovation Officer, Dr. Xiaolan Fu, Professor and Founding Director of Oxford University’s Technology & Management Centre for Development, David Kappos, Partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and former Director of the USPTO, and Caroline Ylitalo, Division Scientist at 3M. Here a few items that resonated with me:

Views from academia, industry and public sector

• Dr. Fu highlighted the case of under-the-radar innovation taking place in developing economies, and how digitalization is changing adoption patterns into and out of LDCs. But it’s not only permeability and diffusion that are changing, it’s also about the impact on labor and the growth in services from disembodying know-how and delivering expertise digitally.
• From the corporate side, 3M’s Caroline Ylitalo spoke of major challenges and trends we face as society. She highlighted the impact of crisis and the opportunities they may arise from it, shown in the surge in demand for N95 masks, and visible also in the utility gains from the digital world’s access to masses of technical information, along with the advent of ideation tools and collaboration platforms.
• P&G’s Victor Aguilar drove home the point of digitalization’s impact for P&G’s goal of improving life, ranging from AI’s contribution to retailing optimization, to its role in designing smart toothbrushes, and to the increasing importance of identifying relevant innovation arising outside P&G.
• Cravath’s David Kappos highlighted how dependent the realization of huge economic output and the delivery of the benefit to society are on making sure ecosystems’ participants do what they do best (per their respective missions)
  • Private sector develops suitable commercially defensible applications,
  • Inventors and their institutions need access to the tools – including collaborative networks – to help convert their innovative insights into invention disclosure and products
  • Governments alone needs to provide money and structure of well-reasoned incentives to grow and make accessible the bounty of fundamental research;the private sector’s need to provide returns to owners makes investment in basic research prohibitive.

Public and private motivations: even if not aligned, good neighbors enable a productive existence

The role of government policy and its ability to create a fertile bed of fundamental research is a topic receiving significant attention. And well it should. Thoughtful and economically supportive public policy for fundamental research can produce huge big social benefits. Once they’re convinced of the business potential prospects, the private sector gets busy converting discoveries from a trove of basic research into commercialized inventions. That’s not all, as “de-risked” innovations come into focus, industry dramatically increases its share of development expense.

Beginning in the 1950s, the space race led to the creation of NASA in the US and its enormous role in driving aerospace research and creating in the process a rich network of public-private collaboration. Sponsored research was involved of course, but government purchases of innovation-based products from the private sector – there was no other buyer – were also a critical factor in clearing a path to commercialization of those space-age inventions.

Enormous productivity flowed from that inventive output which created social benefits many times those of the gains for the private sector in a broad array of fields, such as energy storage, photovoltaics and nuclear energy.

The grand challenges facing us and the need to pay attention to the direction of innovation

As the world faces climate change, ongoing food insecurity, the need for higher levels of education and the preservation of privacy rights, to name some big ones, government can play an important role. While the public sector can’t do a great job of predicting private sector winners, it can do things to even out the playing field through incentives, such as by purchasing from innovative smaller firms willing to take the risk of developing emerging technology.

There is so much inside this report, I am moved to invoke lyrics from OMC’s 1995 hit single, How Bizarre, but with a twist: you don’t need to “buy the rights”, WIPO grants you a free readership license, so download their great Intellectual Property Report 2022: The Direction of Innovation – and enjoy its valuable insights.

BTW, keep an eye out for a future SeedSprint blogpost where we’ll get more into the weeds on a topic WIPO cares a lot about: increasing the efficiency of the critical interplay between innovation-seeking large enterprise on one side, and technology providers on the other, i.e., institutional intermediaries such as TTOs, along with risk-taking micro and SMEs (MSMEs) in the private sector.

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When you start a company to commercialize your technology, choosing to work with an industry partner can take your technology to the next level. Industry partners can help your company conduct clinical trials, provide investment, help with scale-up, and much more.

However, finding a good collaboration partner is tricky, and can take time. Here are some recommendations for avoiding common pitfalls and finding better partners, fast.

Identifying the ‘right fit’ companies to collaborate with, in the first place

Finding a company to collaborate with involves more than simply identifying an established player in your industry. Ideally, a ‘right fit’ company has innovation goals in your technology area and a track record of success in partnering with companies like yours.

Understanding the industry partner’s innovation goals 

It is important to check whether the prospective partner is actively involved in research relevant to your work. Sometimes, the main websites and product pages for big industry players represent past innovation goals. Instead, look specifically for the company’s Innovation or Partnership page. These pages outline a company’s R&D objectives, corporate strategy, and innovation goals.

Additionally, these pages can even describe the partnership structures they prefer to work with. Together, evaluating these factors can help you determine if a partnership with your startup will fit well with the company’s goals going forward.

Looking at past partnerships

Further, the companies you are targeting should have experience working with companies like yours on development tasks. Some examples of development tasks include prototyping, clinical trials, and distribution.

If a company does not expressly outline its future R&D goals or preferred partnership strategy, look at a company’s recent collaborations. Deals within the past 5 years can sometimes be a good indicator of the company’s interests. Previous partnership structures are also indicative of a company’s preferred role in collaboration, whether it be as a partner in research, collaborator in testing or clinical trials, investor, or acquisition partner.

Identifying the right people at a company

Once you’ve found the right company, many startups face the obstacle of finding the right people to propel your development goals. Business development infrastructure at large companies can be complex and difficult to navigate. Here are some considerations before reaching out to technology scouts to make sure that you are contacting someone that can meaningfully contribute to your relationship with a potential partner.

Understanding area of expertise

Even within a company, technology scouts and business development professionals may have different areas of scientific or technological expertise. The diversity or specificity of a scout’s technology area is often a factor of the size and scientific breadth of the company. Smaller companies’ scouts may work with most incoming technologies, even if they do not necessarily have a background in that field. A large company’s technology scouts may be more segmented by technology area.

Understanding technology maturity

Scouts or BD officers also often work with different company maturities. At larger companies, scouts may specialize in collaborations with academia, startups, or other corporations. In smaller environments, scouts may wear many hats or take on both business development and transactions responsibilities. Their titles may also be less specific to technology sourcing and collaboration.

A scout’s georgraphical region of interest 

Some tech scouts and BD&L people are responsible for identifying exciting emerging technologies in specific regions of the world, while others are location-agnostic. It is important to pay attention to whether the scout you identified covers your region or not before reaching out.

Catching the attention of scouts at relevant companies

Scouts are often inundated with requests from technology entrepreneurs, hopeful to get their technology off of the ground. It is easy for your technology to get lost in the sea of corporate communications. So, how can you make your company stand out and get the attention of tech scouts? SeedSprint can help! SeedSprint is free of charge for startups and research institutions and is available at a flat fee for industry. You can sign up here and search scouts by keyword, maturity, and region. Happy seedsprint-ing!

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Samsung is currently accepting applications for a 6-month startup acceleration program for young companies with technology that can enhance or be used with Samsung products. The program, called Samsung Startup Acceleration Program (SAP), will award five startups a $100K grant and provide development support. The program is open to companies based in the US and Canada. Read on to learn more about the program, and be aware that applications close on April 17!

Samsung’s program is a great fit with many startups on SeedSprint. After all, our core mission is to facilitate collaboration between emerging technology and industry. Samsung’s SAP program is an excellent source of both funding and development and expertise for young companies with promising technology to work with an important player in the consumer electronics space.

Our team sat down with Raul Quino, Director of Technology Strategy and Partnerships at Samsung Research America, to learn more about the program.

SeedSprint: How does Samsung SAP fit into the company innovation strategy? Is it supposed to identify completely new technologies that turn into products or to fill in specific gaps?

Raul: Today, the program’s primary goals are to accelerate the launch of specific technologies that complement Samsung technologies. We are looking for technology or solution that can be applied to Mobile, TV, wearable, and future robot products. While we want to work with companies whose technology is in their roadmap, we are also eager to look at innovative products and encourage any company to apply. 

SeedSprint: Who is involved in evaluating submissions for the program? Does Samsung Corporate Ventures get involved, or the R&D departments?

Raul: The selection process is coordinated by Samsung Research America, Samsung Ventures, and Samsung R&D.

SeedSprint: Do you like when submissions detail how they see the fit with Samsung? Do you expect it? 

 Raul: This program was specifically made to work with companies that have a strong fit with Samsung’s products. The fit with Samsung is, in fact, one of the questions we ask companies when applying for the program. 

SeedSprint: If you could snap your fingers and have whatever technology you want – what kinds of tech would come through the accelerator?

Raul: There are too many to name, but some technologies we are excited about include: display technologies for battery, on-device AI, camera technology, computer vision, advanced materials, sensors, battery technology, audio technology, AR, wearables, home robotics, gaming, GreenTech, IoT, social platforms, CSR, and health/fitness.

Interested in Samsung SAP? Applications close on April 17th and can be submitted here. You can also reach out to jump@samsung.com for more information. Best of luck to all who apply!  

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As part of the 2020 TechConnect Virtual Summit last month, we attended a session called “Working with Defense Primes.” We had the opportunity to hear from Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program leads at four of the five US-based defense prime contractors: Alf Carroll of Raytheon Technologies, Kevin McGrath of Northrop Grumman, Craig Owens of Lockheed Martin, and Paul Staszak of Boeing. 

If you aren’t familiar with the SBIR/STTR programs, they are competitive awards-based Research and Development (R&D) programs available to US-based small businesses. Through the programs, small businesses have the opportunity to develop and commercialize their technologies. 

The SBIR and STTR programs are coordinated by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and funded by one of eleven federal agencies. Some of these agencies include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense (DoD). STTR differs from SBIR in that it involves collaborations between small businesses and US-based nonprofit research institutions. The DoD plays a critical role in the programs. In fact, the agency makes up over 40% of the SBIR/STTR budget. 

The benefits of startup-defense prime collaboration

So why work with a defense prime contractor? Small businesses receive all sorts of benefits from partnering with a prime. Some of these benefits include access to subject matter expertise and resources, roadmaps towards commercialization, resources for IP concerns, funding strategy guidance, and support during proposals. 

The collaboration benefits the primes too. Through the partnership, primes build long-term, strategic relationships with small businesses. Additionally, the partnership helps primes to deliver innovative solutions and advanced technologies to their customers. The primes often align innovative small businesses and their technologies to their innovation priorities. This alignment results in the development of more advanced technology that benefits both parties. 

How small businesses can initiate a collaboration with primes

So how does a small business get started on collaborating with the primes? In order to apply for SBIR/STTR funding through the DoD, a small business must meet the qualifications explained here. Most of the primes send out a topic interest list that can give hopefuls an indication of whether their emerging technology is of interest. If your technology is not listed, a small business can usually reach out to each prime to be added. If your technology aligns with one of the primes’ interests, you can fill out an SBIR/STTR form for that prime and email it to their SBIR/STTR department. 

Tips for Successful Collaboration

What is the best way to engage with the defense prime contractors? In the session, the speakers had some important advice for small businesses beginning the process:

1. Be flexible and able to pivot. The primes often will have ideas about how to adjust your technology to fit specific needs.
2. Be persistent about contact. Furthermore, understand where your contact is within these big companies. It is important to find the right person who can advocate for you.
3. Don’t be vague. Come prepared and be concise about where and how your technology will fit in at the prime with whom you are speaking.

We hope we helped to de-mystify the process of working with the US-based defense prime contractors. We wish you luck in advancing your technology through this process!

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SeedSprint member Insignia Technologies is a young smart packaging company operating from Glasgow’s BioCity site. The company’s technology lets consumers and professional users judge a perishable product’s freshness without any fancy equipment – it’s all in the label.

Insignia’s smart label makes the freshness of perishable food products visible. The company seeks to build industry relationships and expand into Food and Beverage, Cosmetics, and Pharmaceuticals. We got in touch with Dr. Graham Skinner, Insignia’s Head of Product Development, to see what he had to say about SeedSprint’s collaboration platform for emerging technology and industry:

“I got a call from SeedSprint and they told me they thought they had subscribers interested in our company. When I understood who SeedSprint’s subscribers were, I decided to take a look. It was very simple: I signed up. That evening, before I’d even made any changes to our starter profile, I had a message from a large, non-European industrial MNC. That was three weeks ago and we’re now in active discussions with them on application-specific product development. SeedSprint also lets me search for other industry partners. It’s a no-brainer: it’s easy to use, completely free, and it works.”

Are you an emerging technology company looking to connect with industry? SeedSprint is available to startups and research institutions at no cost and is available to industry at a flat annual fee. Join the community!

*Picture Copyright Chris Watt www.chriswatt.com

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Last week, Microsoft announced that it is partnering with Alaska Airlines and SkyNRG, the global leader for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), as part of its effort to reduce carbon emissions.

More sustainable business travel

Through the new partnership, Microsoft will buy SAF from SkyNRG to fuel its employees’ business travel on Alaska Airlines. To start, the agreement will apply to business travel between California and the company’s global headquarters in Washington State. Microsoft plans to expand the agreement to apply to other routes.

Traditional aviation fuel is refined from petroleum, while SAF is produced from sustainable resources, like waste oils, feedstocks, and even carbon captured from the air. SAF reduces carbon emissions across its lifecycle. To date, SkyNRG has helped over 30 airlines around the world reduced their carbon footprints — but the partnership with Microsoft and Alaska Airlines is different.

The new partnership is the first of its kind in the United States and has the potential to become a model for other companies to reduce the environmental impact of their business travel.

10 years to “carbon negative”?

And Microsoft isn’t just trying to reduce its carbon footprint. Earlier this year, the company announced its goal to become “carbon negative” by 2030. This is more aggressive than common corporate climate pledges like “carbon neutral” or “net zero”, which indicate the company is removing an amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that is equivalent to their current emissions (or that they are preventing such an amount from being emitted in the first place). 

By contrast, a “carbon negative” Microsoft would mean that the company effectively removes more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. Microsoft has stated that by 2050, it hopes to remove enough emissions to account for all the carbon released due to Microsoft activities since the company’s founding in 1975.

Environmental sustainability has been a major focus at many large corporations over the past few years, and climate pledges are certainly not new. Still, Microsoft’s targets are among the most aggressive of any large corporation to date. 

Investing in carbon reduction and removal technologies

In addition to reducing the carbon footprint of its business travel, the company has created the Climate Innovation Fund to help aid in its mission to become “carbon negative.” The fund will invest $1 billion of Microsoft capital to accelerate the deployment of emerging technologies that facilitate carbon reduction and removal over the next 4 years.

Will other large corporations follow Microsoft’s lead and make similar climate pledges to become “carbon negative,” and how will they get there? Only time will tell, but we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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Earlier this month, French scientists published a paper in Nature describing a new enzyme that breaks down the common plastic, polyethylene terephthalate (PET, or PETE), faster and more efficiently than any previous candidates. The enzyme was developed through a collaboration between the emerging green chemistry company, Carbios, and the University of Toulouse and is already being touted as “a huge step forward” by scientists not involved in the research. 

If you aren’t familiar with PET, the flexible, translucent plastic makes up many common household products, from disposable plastic water bottles to food containers to beauty product bottles. Estimates say that about 70 tons of PET are produced each year, but only about 30% of it gets turned into new plastic. As a result, PET makes up a big part of plastic pollution.

The PET recycling rate is so low because, when it gets melted, dyes and residues that are part of the plastic packaging remain mixed in, so it becomes difficult to reuse. Instead, it’s usually made into low-grade fibers for carpets, jacket insulation, sleeping bags, and other products where the mixing of additional dyes and residues is not a problem.

So what makes this new enzyme such a good solution for managing plastic pollution? The enzyme is an engineered version of leaf-branch compost cutinase (LLC), which breaks the bonds between PET’s building blocks, terephthalate and ethylene glycol. In a laboratory test, the engineered LLC was able to convert 90% of recycled PET back into its starting materials in only 10 hours. The output is reusable because the enzyme is able to break the bonds linking the two PET components, which returns them to their original form without touching the dyes and other additives in the mix. There is one major limitation, however. Bottles must be ground up and heated before the enzyme is added, so the recycled PET will be more expensive than the original. Still, there is certainly demand for a recycled end product that’s as good as its starting material. Carbios is currently partnered with Pepsi, L’Oréal, Nestlé, and Novozymes to help accelerate development. The company plans to have a demonstration plant completed by the end of next year and begin commercial production by 2025.

Though Carbios’s enzyme is only one of many solutions needed to reduce plastic pollution, it is sure to rescue a significant amount of post-consumer plastic from landfills and oceans. Looking to learn more about the science behind this new enzyme? Check out the original Nature paper or this article from Science Magazine News. Happy reading!

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To understand patent best practices for startups in the United States under AIA, it’s important to understand the concepts of ‘first to invent’ versus ‘first to file.’

‘First to file’

In the past, when a US-based innovator applied for a patent, he or she had to prove they were the first to invent. The AIA changed this. The new ‘first to file’ system guarantees that the first person to file a patent is able stake a claim on the innovation – regardless of any evidence contesting that person’s leadership on the claimed invention.

Understandably, AIA made a splash in the university research and startup community. Under ‘first to file’, inventors worried they might lose control of their technology if they spoke in public about an invention before filing a patent. The risk increases with time, which is a problem if the inventor still needs to fundraise in order to finance the patent filing process.

Timing Patents for Startups and Inventors

The natural question that stems from this is, what are patent best practices for startups and inventors?

Experts were originally concerned about two potential impacts of ‘first to file’. One concern was that, due to AIA, inventors would wait a long time to file a patent, often, until after they had raised money from investors. This would open inventors up to risk as more and more people learned about their invention before they had gained exclusive rights to it.

Additionally, delays in filing would make it challenging for innovators to communicate with potential strategic partners about their new technologies, without fear of repercussions.

Is there an alternative to this heightened risk? There is: moving quickly.

According to Jonathan Withrow, a partner at intellectual property law firm Rankin, Hill & Clark, many innovators are more likely to rush to file patents than wait, as ‘first to file’ increases the pressure to file a patent application.

Yet rushing to file a patent can cause problems, too. It takes time for university researchers and startup founders to decide how to optimize the development and commercialization of new technology. If a patent is filed before a technology has found its proper market fit, this can lead to problems down the road.

With these two scenarios in mind, an inventor might ask: when is the right time to apply for a patent?

Patent Filing Best Practice for Startups: Don’t Delay

Despite the risks of poor market fit, there is consensus among intellectual property attorneys and startup advisors: it’s better to file for a patent sooner rather than later.

Investing in an attorney early on and being proactive about the process is better than risking your idea altogether. Experts encourage innovators to file for a patent even before the inventor has fully researched the future product’s market viability. Waiting too long is just too big a risk to take.

UC Berkeley intellectual property law professor Robert Barr cautions that filing a patent too soon can be a financial burden and an uncertain bet. Nonetheless, he encourages inventors to file early rather than risk losing the rights to their idea.

A recent study out of Harvard Business School paints an even starker picture. For each year that a startup delays in filing a patent, the study found that employment and sales growth falls by 21-28%.

With these findings in mind, inventors must consider the roadmap for technology transfer and commercialization before filing. However, they must also recognize that it is possible to lose out on opportunities by delaying a patent.

The Future of ‘First to File’

Given how common it is worldwide, it’s very likely that ‘first to file’ is here to stay. The world’s major economies had already adopted this system by the time AIA came into force in the United States.

Are you developing a technology that has commercial applications? Think the resources of an industry partner might help speed it up? The SeedSprint platform is a free, secure tool to help researchers, licensing professionals, and entrepreneurs bring their inventions to market through industry collaboration. Check us out and connect with a corporate partner today!

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