IMAT Patent Trends
Methods
A list of 413 IMAT awards was compiled from multiple sources: a list developed by Macros, the Cancer Research Portfolio database, the IMAT Web site, and the Division of Cancer Diagnosis Program Web site. These awards were used to identify publications using PubMed. Queries were performed for each calendar year from 1999 to 2006 using the general format of the publication year and the actual grant numbers, for example “1999[dp] AND (CA089512[gr] OR R43CA089512[gr]…).” For the identification of patent applications, the same awards were used to query the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Databases. Queries were performed using the actual grant numbers, for example, “govt/CA089512 OR govt/R43CA089512 OR govt/CA89512 OR govt/R43CA089512).”
Figure 2. The trend in number of patent applications and patents published by the USPTO that cite IMAT grants in the Government Interest field from 2001 through the first 6 months of 2008*.
Significant Results
- In the first 7 months of 2008, 11 patent applications have been published by the USPTO and 3 patents have been approved.
- For the remainder of calendar year 2007, 9 patent applications were published by the USPTO and 4 patents were approved.
- The number of patents published that cite IMAT awards have been relatively consistent, as evidenced by both the number of patent applications submitted and patents awarded/approved over time.
Caveats
- The data collection method is able to identify only those patent applications and patents in the USPTO databases that cite an IMAT grant number, which assumes that all inventors acknowledged this information and that they entered the grant number using 1 of 4 iterations in the Government Interest field.
- The patent application office maintains records only from March 2001 to the present; therefore, patent applications published prior to 2001 will not be included in this analysis.
- The 2008 data represent the published results through the first 7 months of 2008 only.
Sample Institutions and Organizations Producing IMAT Technologies
The following is a cross-section of institutions and organizations receiving IMAT-related inventions, as expressed by the acquisition of patents and/or submission of IMAT-related patent applications citing a specific IMAT grant number in the Government Interest field.
| IMAT Grantee Name (Institution/Organization) |
|---|
| Allegheny-Singer Research Institute |
| Ambion, Inc. |
| Baylor College of Medicine |
| Brigham and Women's Hospital |
| Children's Hospital of Philadelphia |
| Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
| Columbia University, Morningside |
| Georgia State University |
| Harvard University |
| Illumina, Inc. |
| Institute for Systems Biology |
| Intronn, LLC |
| Johns Hopkins University |
| Massachusetts General Hospital |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Medical University of South Carolina |
| Northwestern University |
| Rockefeller University |
| Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center |
| Stanford University |
| Tufts University |
| University of Arkansas Medical Sciences |
| University of California |
| University of California, Berkeley |
| University of Maryland, College Park |
| University of Missouri |
| University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center |
| University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, Dallas |
| University of Washington |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Vanderbilt University |
| Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology |
| Total number of inventions = 101 |
Figure 3. Invention count by institution (2001-2007) for organizations listed in Figure 2.
