Ringold talks about how patents are critical in different ways in different stages of a company. Patents in the early stage are very important to get a competitive edge. Ultimately, patents that are most valuable are those on composition and matter, he says.

Transcript



I've never been in a biotech company where we felt generally speaking that we had spent too much money on patents. Patents in the early stage are very important to allow you to have some advantage over the competition. Now obviously if it's in an industry where the lifecycle of products is very short, patents are less meaningful. And ultimately the patents that are most valuable are patents not on process or technology, but patents on composition of matter. So we try to patent a lot of the stuff that I showed you - the process used, the software. But people will ultimately come up with ways of doing it a slightly different way that will either get around your patent or whether it's too costly to worry about fighting one another and spending millions of dollars on that kind of a patent fight. But if we discovered that peak - 1,217 - in combination with another peak, those two things together are a definitive diagnostic for early stage MS. You absolutely want to patent that. That protects that as a diagnostic test that others can then not use without your blessing or permission. So patents are critical but they're critical in different ways of different stages of a company.

1. What is an Entrepreneur?
2. Importance of Passion
3. Being an Entrepreneur in Industry vs. Education: Team vs. Individual
4. Types of Company in Biotech
5. History: From Bayer to Affymax
6. Biotech: Collaboration vs. Competition in Developing Affymax
7. Pharmaceutical Companies: Challenges in Developing New Therapeutic Products
8. Funding Challenges in Today's Market
9. History of Maxygen
10. History of Surromed
11. Biggest Pharmaceutical Products in Industry Today
12. How to Operate in a Downturn Economy
13. When and How are Patents Important?
14. Change the Business Plan in Response to a Changing Environment

Gordon Ringold from Surromed lectures on Entrepreneurship for Stanford University students, February 26, 2003. Dr. Ringold was most recently CEO of the Glaxo-Wellcome Group's Affymax Research Institute, where he managed the development of novel technologies to accelerate the pace of drug discovery. He is a co-founder and director of Maxygen Corporation, a Managing Partner of Technogen Associates, L.P., a private investment firm, and has over fifteen years of experience managing the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals and novel, enabling life science technologies. In this Stanford lecture, he talks about funding challenges in today's market and how to operate in a downturn economy.

Course Details:
- Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lectures
- Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner (ecorner)

Original Course Name: Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lectures