JIC Intellectual Property, Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation

The mission of the John Innes Centre is to improve the quality of life and contribute to wealth creation, primarily by contributing to the knowledge base through excellent scientific research and training of scientists and making these finding available to society. The primary output from our research is knowledge , and represents our principal and most important asset. We share this asset through publication and our knowledge exchange and commercialisation (KEC) activities. When appropriate, we protect our knowledge and inventions through intellectual property (IP) protection, patenting our findings.

JIC is a charity and under an obligation to ensure that IP that arises from its research is properly protected to encourage its use for the benefit of society. Many of the organisations that fund JIC science require us to take appropriate steps to protect IP that arises from research they sponsor. JIC retains ownership of our IP ownership and takes responsibility to ensure that its intellectual property is managed and made available to secure the objectives of JIC’s mission. In 1994, to meet these responsibilities, JIC established its own technology transfer and IP subsidiary - Plant Bioscience Ltd (PBL). PBL is equally and jointly owned by JIC, The Sainsbury Laboratory and the BBSRC and is a professional and fully commercial IP management and technology transfer company. PBL serves other public research organisations in addition to JIC and is widely recognised for its comprehensive technology transfer services in the life sciences

The Role of Intellectual Property Protection in JIC Research

JIC supports the use of intellectual property protection where this will maximize benefits to society and enable life science research to continue to flourish.

Securing IP protection allows for full disclosure of novel information, in return for protection of the rights of the innovator. Hence protection of IP encourages inventors to publish information in the public domain. Without an appropriate means of IP protection the flow of new information might be restricted in order to protect a competitive/commercial advantage, or even an academic one, and such restriction would be contrary to the openness that is an essential part of public research culture. Indeed, a relatively prompt and unrestricted exchange of knowledge and know-how is essential for JIC’s academic competitiveness and for maintaining a thriving research community.

We recognise that our research innovations will often require substantial further investment to reach applications in the market place and that IP protection has an important role in creating favourable conditions for the uptake and use of such research findings. We believe that IP should be made available in such a way that normal academic exchanges and interactions are not unduly hampered.

In most instances, patenting will be the appropriate mechanism to protect innovations emerging from research advances at JIC. Other IP protection routes such as copyright and contract-based licensing for data collections and physical materials may also be used . In some cases, our knowledge exchange goals may be best achieved by simple dissemination of research results and findings, without restriction and without particular IP protection.

Exploitation of new technology for the benefit of society often requires the active participation of industry in converting knowledge, produced by the research community, into industrial processes and products. Together with PBL, JIC has an established policy for protection and stewardship of JIC’s IP rights which form “background” matter to, or emerge from, industry-funded research at the Institute, or bilateral industrial-collaborations or consortia. Securing intellectual property rights in our research forms the basis of successful partnerships/ agreements with industry and encourages private sector development investment into early stage innovations.

For further information about any JIC intellectual property which is available for licensing, please contact PBL info@pbltechnology.com +44 (0)1603 45600

For further information about industrial sponsorship or industry collaborative research at John Innes Centre please contact Jon Clarke