GC Roundtable: IP
In November 2015, GC, in association with Finnegan, gathered together IP counsel and GCs in London to discuss emerging trends and strategies in the changing world of intellectual property.
First up on the agenda for our discussion was big data. Nick Maltby of Genomics England is general counsel for the 100,000 Genomes Project, a UK government initiative which collects DNA data from patients with rare diseases and cancers. Balancing the sensitivity of the personal data with the opportunity for commercialisation produces both security and IP challenges: ‘We have multiple and, to some extent, conflicting aims. We invite in pharma, we invite in biotech, we invite in others who are interested in the potential research benefit you can get from looking at linked datasets, so you might discover new therapies, new diagnoses, new ways of treating patients. It is those things that we are looking to commercialise and we are also looking at IP protection around that. However, unless we can protect the data, the whole project could fall over as you lose patient confidence.’
In common with other financial institutions, at Barclays the use and potential commercialisation of data to track trends for businesses is an emergent area for development. Calum Smyth, the bank’s global head of IP, wonders how possible it is to protect IP around data: ‘Can you own particular data which may be business-related? You get through that hurdle and then you are into questions of copyright. We always start with copyright and database rights, but how valuable is that really? Is there some sort of functionality that you can place around it by doing something whizzy with the database? And is that protectable, either by a trade secret or (we hope) a patent?’ But, he adds, the future is looking hopeful: ‘Various cases in the US would suggest that it is an area that is developing.’
