Seminar on “IP Strategies in Bioscience” successfully completed

The first round of seminars on “Intellectual Property Strategies in Bioscience” within the EU project “ScanBalt Intellectual Property Knowledge Network” is completed. The third seminar was successfully held on 8th and 9th June 2006 in Hanseatic City of Wismar’s town hall. More than 40 participants took part in lectures, workshops and practical-oriented case studies to the seminar on IP access, utilization and commercialization. „Living in a knowledge economy means that IP must be managed as a business asset”, said Bo Heiden, project leader of the organizing ScanBalt project Intellectual Property Knowledge Network, and further on: „It is necessary to change our economic mindset from a world where value and wealth are based on managing the production of physical products to one where intellectual assets are the core. In bioscience IP is critical for both access to research results as well as their commercial utilization and thus poses great challenges for both universities and business to find the right balance of both open and proprietary use.”

Frank Graage, head of the organizing team from Steinbeis Transfer Center Technology Northeast in Rostock pointed out: “Northern Germany has great requisites to be a leading region in Life sciences in the Baltic Sea Region. But not only research, development and production will make the step ahead. Clever utilization of our Intellectual Assets is of key importance for a successful development of that branch in the region.” Seminar participant Dr. Gudrun Mernitz is leading the Greifswald based start-up company “Ressourcencentrum Marine Organismen” and she highlighted: “Prior to the seminar I thought that IP protection plays only a secondary role in our business and one can pay attention on that far later. Now, after the lectures and talks I know that IP Management is of crucial importance for our company. The participation in that seminar was of highest value.”

Local experts, such as Dr. Dieter Laudien, former head of IP-division in a worldwide operating pharma company as well as Dr. Malte Köllner, Venture Capitalist and Patent Attorney, brought in their expertise about regional specialties as well as experiences from day-to-day business. The seminar set is to be proceeded in autumn 2006 in Vilnius/Lithuania as well as in Gdansk/Poland. Further information about contents is downloadable on the web site of ScanBalt Intellectual Property Knowledge Network at www.cip.chalmers.se/ipkn/