50 most influential people in IP 2020: notable individuals

The duo from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology and the University of California, Berkeley were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for their contributions to the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9.

Since Charpentier and Doudna discovered CRISPR-Cas9 in 2012, its use has exploded, leading to a surge of patent applications and a tense dispute between UC Berkeley and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard over some of the earliest and most fundamental registrations.

The Nobel win is important in the world of IP because it potentially adds some weight to UC Berkeley’s arguments at the USPTO – which could be a good thing for innovator licensees that are waiting for more licensing certainty in the CRISPR space. 

Managing IP had previously reported that in-house attorneys were reluctant to sign up to CRISPR licensing deals until they had more clarity on which research body they should approach for a licence.

Franck Coutand, former patent manager at Limagrain in France, told Managing IP in October 2019: “I’m not sure anyone knows who to pay at the moment.

“Lots of people and companies don’t have any problems getting licences for the things they need, but if they don’t know where to get good tools, that uncertainty leads to speculation.”

If all of that were not enough to secure Doudna and Charpentier’s place in our top 50 list this year, their win also marks the first time the Nobel Prize for chemistry has been awarded to two women.

 

The police’s killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, sparked enormous anger and grief over the treatment of black individuals in the US and many other countries this year, leading to wide-scale protests and a fundamental shift in the global narrative on racism.

That shift flowed into almost every corner of Western society, including IP. For that reason, Floyd has undoubtedly – and tragically – been one of the most influential people in IP in 2020.

After Floyd’s death, companies with controversial and racially charged brands, such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s, decided to rebrand. Even the owner of the Washington Redskins, who had stubbornly held out against protests over his football team’s name and logo for years, dropped the brand because of sponsor pressure after protests erupted.

IP law firms and organisations also started to grapple with the subjects of racism and diversity as a result of Floyd’s passing. Many law firms had already made efforts to improve their diversity before 2020, but the killing in Minneapolis compelled them to ramp up their plans or put new ones into action.

Crowell & Moring in New York City, for example, launched a Racial Equity Task Force, made up of management board members, firm leaders, and members of the firm’s diversity affinity groups. The USPTO created the National Council for Expanding American Innovation this year, to drive diversity and inclusion in innovation.

Although we at Managing IP acknowledge that these changes, and many others, were pushed by a lot of different people in different organisations, the unifying factor and driver behind them was certainly the immense sadness, disbelief and disruption that came from Floyd’s death.

His death will probably continue to serve as a sobering reminder of the need for greater acceptance, diversity and inclusion in the IP world – and elsewhere – for years to come.

 

When COVID-19 rampaged across northern Italy at the beginning of the pandemic, Cristian Fracassi jumped into action with his 3D printer to reverse-engineer replacement valves for respiratory machines.

The CEO and founder of the engineering start-up Isinnova bypassed IP rights to these medical devices and made the CAD file publicly available online. In the days that followed, there were over 2 million downloads of the file and 150,000 replacement valves printed around the world.

“People were interested in our idea because it was so simple. The replacement valve was also a simple idea because 3D printers were ubiquitous around the world and you could use them to reproduce objects that would help people,” Fracassi told Managing IP. 

“Our idea caught on because we shared the file for free because it was a priority for us to keep costs down. We only asked people who downloaded it to keep prices to a minimum so hospitals everywhere could afford them.”

Fracassi and his team continued to contribute to the COVID effort when they repurposed and patented a ski mask that could be used as part of a respiratory machine.

Because Fracassi wanted to make sure that the mask could be used by as many people as possible, he decided not to enforce his IP unless a competitor decided to charge more for the same mask.

The publication of the CAD file for the replacement valves raised serious questions about whether IP could become a barrier to access in an emergency. As vaccines inch closer to approval, global health advocates are urging that IP rights be waived to COVID-19 vaccines and therapies for developing countries.

 

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Ellen ‘t Hoen is the director of Medicines Law & Policy and a fierce global advocate for equitable access to medicine. While ‘t Hoen had long been praised for her work, she received substantial acclaim this year for her efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, she has called for pharma companies and research bodies to contribute all of their relevant IP to a COVID technology and access pool. The idea was that by sharing IP and know-how, researchers could avoid duplicating failures and speed up research.

Her experience working in the access-to-medicine movement began with the AIDS pandemic, when she and others started the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to address shortages of vital antiviral drugs in the developing world. The pool is built on a model that takes licences from pharma innovators and arranges royalties with generics companies.

She has called on international health organisations, governments and pharma innovators to expand the mandate of the MPP and contribute to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool.

“Current efforts to develop vaccines are largely dependent on public financing. A COVID-19 vaccine should be a global public good,” said ‘t Hoen. “This is why the proposal for a COVID pool for emerging technologies is so important, because it will cut through the otherwise country-by-country, case-by-case battles to gain access to IP and knowledge.”

In opinion columns across the world, she has written widely on why IP should not be a barrier to COVID vaccines and therapies. Her advocacy for global equitable access to medicine is only going to become more influential as pharma innovators get closer to a vaccine.

 

Although Creative Commons might be best known for expanding access to artistic works, the organisation made waves in the health space this year by putting together the Open COVID Pledge. General counsel Diane Peters pushed for, and has since managed, the pledge.

As part of this pledge, organisations and companies including Facebook, Mitsubishi, Amazon, IBM and AT&T made their IP freely available to anyone who promised to use it to contribute to the struggle against the COVID pandemic. 

In August, Creative Commons announced that it would take leadership and stewardship of the pledge. Peters and Eric Steuer, creative director and communications director at Creative Commons, are now its co-chairs.

Peters tells Managing IP that she is pleased to have had so many big names sign up to the pledge, but that there is still a lot of work to be done. For one, she would like to see more connection between the IP that the pledge has made available and those who need access to it.

This year, Peters also helped Creative Commons co-ordinate individuals from five jurisdictions – China, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, Singapore and Taiwan – to translate its 4.0 licence into both simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese.

The 4.0 licence allows licensees to copy and redistribute material in any format and to remix or transform the material for any purpose, including a commercial one.

Peters’ work has been hugely important to the world this year – but we hope that we won’t have to recognise her in this list next year, at least not for the same reason.

 

That Stephen Thaler is a human would not be worth noting in an ordinary scenario, but it is a crucial factor in his inclusion in our list this year.

In 2018 and 2019, Thaler filed parallel patent applications at the USPTO, the EPO and the UKIPO. Ordinarily, an applicant would complete the details of the (presumably human) inventor.

But the inventor in these patent applications, which were for a food container and an emergency warning light, was attributed to an artificial intelligence (AI) machine called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience).

In decisions handed down in 2019 and 2020, all three IP offices refused the applications. The primary reason was that these jurisdictions all required an inventor to be a natural person, i.e. a human.

In September this year, the England and Wales High Court upheld the UKIPO’s ruling. 

While the decisions are perhaps unsurprising, it is interesting that, until now, there has been little guidance or debate addressing inventorship.

Thaler’s applications – though rejected as they stand – have prompted lawyers to ask important questions about the patent application process.

The questions of whether companies that frequently use machine technology could be tempted to opt for trade secrets, whether the concept of an ‘AI legal person’ should be created, and whether the notion of ‘the person skilled in the art’ should be redefined are just some being asked.

Thaler may not have succeeded in his initial aim, but he has certainly changed the course of the debate. 

Name	Position	Organisation	Country (based)
Kasim Alfalahi	CEO	Avanci	US
Trevor Arnold	Chief IP counsel	Arthrex	US
Benjamin Bai	Chief IP counsel	Ant Group	China
Vanessa Bailey	Global director of IP policy	Intel	US
Brian Blasius	CEO	PanOptis	US
Ivan Burnside	Chief patent counsel	Eli Lilly	UK
Emma Campbell	Director of legal, corporate services	Sky UK	UK
Jasper Clube	Chief patent counsel	Kymab	UK
Brad Cohen	Senior vice president and head of litigation	Warner Music Group	US
Florian Cordes	Head of European IP litigation	Sisvel	Switzerland
Michael Ding	Chairman	Quality Brands Protection Committee	China
Jody Ellant	General counsel	Romag	US
Craig Etchegoyen	Chairman	WSOU Investments	US
Clemens Heusch	Global head of dispute resolution	Nokia	Germany
Scott McDowell	Head of legal and business affairs	Warner Chappell Music	US
Van Nguy	Assistant general counsel	Waymo	US
Angela Shi	Former senior brand protection manager	New Balance	China
Mark Snyder	Vice president and patent counsel	Qualcomm	US
Charlotte Whitaker	Chief IP counsel	USAA	US
Ariana Woods	Head of IP	Capital One	US
Hisao Yamasaki	Founder	Syndefense	Japan

Name	Position	Organisation	Country (based)
Karen Andrews	Minister for industry, science and technology	Australian government	Australia
Xavier Becerra	Attorney general	California Department of Justice	US
Phil Hogan	Former commissioner for trade	European Commission	Belgium
Boris Johnson	Prime minister	UK government	UK
Christine Lambrecht	Minister of justice and consumer protection	German government	Germany
Li Zhanshu	Chairman	Standing Committee of the China National People's Congress	China
Liu He	Vice premier	Chinese government	China
Thom Tillis	Senator for North Carolina	US Senate	US
Zhang Jun	Procurator general	Supreme People's Procuratorate	China

Name	Position	Organisation	Country (based)
Alan Albright	Judge	District Court for the Western District of Texas	US
Colin Birss	Judge	England and Wales Court of Appeal	UK
Ruth Bader Ginsburg	Justice	US Supreme Court	US
Mukta Gupta	Judge	Delhi High Court	India
Peter Huber	Judge	Federal Constitutional Court	Germany
Roger Lafrenière	Judge	Federal Court of Canada	Canada
Lin Guanghai	Deputy chief judge	Supreme People's Court	China
Eugene Regan	President of the Fifth Chamber	Court of Justice of the EU	Luxembourg

Name	Position	Organisation	Country (based)
António Campinos	President	EPO	Germany
Pascal Faure	Director general	National Institute of Industrial Property	France
David Gooder	Trademark commissioner	USPTO	US
Shri OP Gupta	Former controller general	Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks	India
Andrei Iancu	Director	USPTO	US
Maria Strong	Former acting register of copyrights	US Copyright Office	US
Daren Tang	Director general	WIPO	Switzerland

Name	Position	Organisation	Country (based)
Emmanuelle Charpentier	Director	Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology	Germany
Jennifer Doudna	Professor	University of California, Berkeley	US
George Floyd			US
Cristian Fracassi	CEO and founder	Isinnova	Italy
Ellen 't Hoen	Director	Medicines Law & Policy	Netherlands
Diane Peters	General counsel	Creative Commons	US
Stephen Thaler	Inventor	DABUS	US