Intellectual Property Protection

The technology platform which is being commercially developed was originally produced from the Calgary iGEM team in 2012. This provides a unique IP situation, as this was completed by a large team composed of professors, students, and numerous funding sources. Additionally, all of the work which was completed was disclosed publicly through a variety of posters, presentations, and the 2012 iGEM Calgary Wiki. This has created numerous questions surrounding the protection of our invention, and the type of IP protection to take. The protection strategy that we have taken for our technology platform and business development is detailed below.

Figure 1. Overview of our intellectual property protection of which there are three major categories, regarding protection of our project, the right to operate within this intellectual space through our business development, and to assess the legal protection and ownership protection we require being a former iGEM project.

The technology that we have developed, for the purpose of IP protection can be placed into two categories: 1) the Pseudomonas strain of bacteria genetically engineered to detect toxins in the environment; and 2) the electrochemical platform technology used to convert the sensory element used in the Pseudomonas into an electrical output. Both present unique challenges towards IP protection. The exact genomic region of the Pseudomonas bacteria that was modified was not disclosed at the iGEM 2012 competition, as the team did not have the time to identify where the transposon element was inserted. Because of this situation and the amount disclosed previously, the strain of bacteria will be held as a trade secret for IP protection. Patenting of strains can be useful, however, it fully discloses the nature and important components required for the system to work. Due to the increasing ease of genetic manipulation, it could be easy for competitive parties to copy and modify our system in the future.

The electrochemical sensing platform is the key component to our technology. It will allow for the development of this product, and could serve as a platform technology for future product lines. Therefore its protection is key to ensure the development and commercialization of our technology. Because of disclosures which began in September of 2012, patenting of this platform outside of the USA and Canada, is not possible. In order to protect the technology, our group has applied for a US and Canada provisional patent with the intent of filing a utility patent in one year. This is being completed with Harm Dekkers who is a consultant through HMG Consulting, and has a wide variety of experience with biotechnology related patents.

Our invention is novel and nonobvious and no other example of a multiplexed electrochemical output system exists in the literature nor in any previously published patent. Some examples of prior patent prior art we have looked into are as follows:

Table 1. Provisional Patent prior art patent samples demonstrating some of the prior art which was related to our project.