Photograph of a Filipino farmer by Sonny Leon (sonnyleon@hotmail.com) of Quezon City, Philippines

PIPRA is an non–profit initiative striving to make it easy for developing countries to access new technologies.

PIPRA serves a number of purposes, the most important of which is helping public sector technologies to have an impact on the poor worldwide. We do this by decreasing intellectual property barriers, improving commercialization strategies, and increasing technology transfer. We also help public institutions more broadly by supporting them in getting their technological innovations to those who need it most.

PIPRA's core activities

PIPRA helps innovators working to create new applications for agricultural, health, water, and energy technologies in developing countries and helps public sector organizations get their technologies out of the lab and into use. We do this by improving innovators' ability to navigate IPR issues and think strategically about commercialization.

PIPRA's core activities include the following:

  • IP analysis -- either broad landscapes or focused on particular technologies
  • Biotechnology resources, e.g. the pPIPRA vector
  • Drafting and negotiating agreements, with the support of our pro bono attorney network
  • Research consortia support, including public-private partnerships
  • IP management workshops at public institutions
  • Regional IP Resources, mainly in Latin America and Southeast Asia
  • Commercialization strategy to improve technology delivery
  • IP handbook
  • IP policy analysis

Background and history

PIPRA’s Origins

If you're new to PIPRA, consider reading our first publication in Science Magazine.

PIPRA’s founding mandate was to focus on IPR issues, particularly patents, in plant biotechnology for crops in developing countries and minor crops. The early model of PIPRA was a clearinghouse one – patent information from major public sector organizations (mostly US universities) would be gathered, licensing information would be collected. By providing accessible and searchable data on public sector patenting, PIPRA would increase transparency and lower transaction costs – supporting better commercialization of agricultural biotechnology innovations from the public sector. Complementary to the clearinghouse structure, PIPRA also promoted better management of IP among public sector organizations, including education and outreach on humanitarian use licensing and a range of other topics.

Over the years, PIPRA has evolved from its early design to meet the demands of its stakeholders. We now work across a range of technology sectors, providing IPR analysis and commercialization strategy services, delivering public sector research tools, and continuing a wide range of activities in education and outreach.

Changes Over Time

Much has changed over the decade since PIPRA was first conceived. While perspectives on the use of IPR remain wide-ranging, especially where public sector and developing country interests are at stake, there has been a general movement toward viewing IPR less as a block to innovation and more as a high, but surmountable, transaction cost. Importantly, IPR-related transaction costs have been put into perspective amidst other costs of developing genetically modified crops (including regulatory, technical, marketing, and political issues).

Concurrently, there has been a movement away from on-line marketing and clearinghouses for patents. Many patent aggregator web sites and businesses modeled on promoting on-line licensing of patents have folded during the last decade and we have, collectively, a better appreciation for the complexity of how IPRs are used and licensed.

PIPRA’s growth responded to this changing climate. We moved away from identifying our core function as a patent clearinghouse, and toward a model that provides services and products that we have found are most demanded by our stakeholders. Our products include our pPIPRA plant transformation vector with maximal freedom-to-operate, as well as our educational resources such as the IP Handbook. Our services are now focused on: research and analysis; agreement negotiation and drafting; lab services; and international workshops. And we now work with water, health, and energy as well as agricultural technologies.

We built PIPRA’s business over these years on a model that depends on a strong core analysis and lab staff within PIPRA as well as access to a large international IP attorney network and membership base. We believe this model of leveraging outside professional resources as well as in-depth technical knowledge provides PIPRA with a unique capacity to serve our stakeholders.

Members

Today more than 50 institutions from more than 15 countries around the world are members of PIPRA. Your institution can become part of this community and help to navigate intellectual property for innovation in a more fair and productive manner.

Benefits of being a member

Many of PIPRA’s institutional members have active independent technology transfer programs. PIPRA acts as a resource for these programs, and for scientists that work in the public sector, to facilitate the transfer and adoption of their technologies. PIPRA also provides IP analytical services, lab services, resources for professional best practices in IP management, and connections to an international community.

A growing number of collaborators, including law firms, academic programs, IP management organizations, and policy think-tanks regularly work with PIPRA and its member institutions. These collaborators provide world class services to a diverse client base and view PIPRA’s services and mission to be complementary to their own.

PIPRA’s services and structure are intended to support the missions of its members and it collaborators. Where members have active technology transfer offices or offer IP management services, PIPRA supports them through the provision of complementary, not duplicative, services. PIPRA seeks to engage them in global intellectual property issues important to innovations in agriculture, health, water, and energy.

Who can be a member

PIPRA membership is open to any university, public agency, or non-profit research institution actively engaged in research. Member institutions must support PIPRA's mission and agree to the terms laid out in the PIPRA Memorandum of Understanding.

There is no PIPRA membership fee. Membership does not prescribe particular IP management practices. Nor does it preclude a research institution from securing external IP management services. PIPRA members retain full ownership and responsibility for their institution’s intellectual property. PIPRA offers services to public sector organizations that often face resource and capacity constraints that can inhibit their ability to get innovations to those who need them.

How to become a member

It is easy to become a PIPRA member. Simply, an authorized official of your institution needs to sign the PIPRA Memorandum of Understanding and return it to PIPRA.

For more information, a Prospective Member Information Pack is available upon request.

In addition, someone from PIPRA’s professional staff would be happy to talk with you about membership in the organization. Depending upon travel schedules, it may even be possible for one of us to visit your institution, provide a seminar, and meet with the relevant constituencies who want to learn more.

List of current members

Asia/Pacific

Europe, Middle East, & Africa

Americas

Affiliates

Legal service providers

* Firms that have provided pro bono services for work on PIPRA projects.

IP information services

PIPRA's Directors

Alan B Bennett, Executive Director

Dr. Bennett's research interests are in the developmental control of cell wall assembly and disassembly, carbohydrate metabolism and fruit development. Bennett has published over 120 research papers in leading scientific journals and is a regular speaker at Universities, international symposia and private companies. He also holds several utility patents related to crop quality traits and consults widely on scientific and intellectual property issues in agricultural biotechnology. Bennett earned a B.Sc. degree at the University of California Davis in 1977 and Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1983, both in the field of plant biology. Upon completing postdoctoral research at Cornell, he returned to UC Davis to teach and conduct research in plant molecular biology. Bennett also held a visiting appointment at the Ecole Nationale Superieure Agronomique d' Toulouse in 1997 and belongs to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Plant Biology, the Association of University Technology Managers and the Licensing Executives Society.

Cecilia Chi-Ham, Director Science & Technology

Dr. Cecilia Chi-Ham, a native of Honduras, Central America, earned a B.Sc. degree in Chemistry and Environmental Sciences at the University of the Ozarks, USA and a Ph.D. in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Southern Mississippi, USA. In 2004, upon completing postdoctoral work at Michigan State University in the field of plant biology, Dr. Chi-Ham joined PIPRA. As a plant biologist interested in facilitating agricultural innovations, particularly in developing countries, Dr. Chi-Ham leads PIPRA’s Biotechnology Resources Program. The Biotechnology Resources program’s activities include developing research tools with maximum freedom-to-operate to support a wide array of agricultural applications for humanitarian and commercial purposes, facilitating technology transfer, building new partnerships and research collaborations, and providing legal information on biotechnology tools. The program’s multi-disciplinary activities straddle the delicate junction between science, legal, business development, and regulatory affairs necessary for the research and development of new agricultural innovations in developed and developing countries. Cecilia can be reached at clchiham@ucdavis.edu.

Monica Alandete-Saez, Director of Analyses & Educational Outreach

Dr. Monica Alandete-Saez was born in Valencia, Spain. She obtained a BSc. degree in Biochemistry at the University of Valencia, Spain in 1999. After that, she moved to England to undertake her postgraduate studies in Plant Biotechnology and Plant Molecular Genetics, where she obtained a MSc. at the University of Sussex, Brighton (UK), and a PhD. at the University on Nottingham (UK). Monica then moved to California to complete two postdoctoral positions at UC Berkeley and UC Davis (2006-2009), and published her research in leading scientific journals such as Science. Monica joined PIPRA in 2009 working as an Intellectual Property Analyst within the group at PIPRA that provides IP landscapes and Freedom-to-Operate reports to support and advice in the strategy and decision-making of commercialization of products. She has worked on numerous IP reports as part of collaborative projects with the not-for-profit organization GALVmed for animal vaccines, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for improved crops, for developing countries. In 2011, Monica became the Director of Analyses & Educational Outreach, where she is leading the educational, capacity building and training branch at PIPRA, as well as the team providing IP analyses. She coordinates the organization of international workshops in countries with Emerging Economies on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer, covering topics as Institutional IP Policies, Valorization of IP assets, Public-Private Partnerships, Licensing and Negotiations of IP assets, etc.

Pablo Zamora, Latin American Liaison

Dr. Pablo Zamora earned a B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry and a Ph.D in Biotechnology at the University of Santiago, Chile. He is a Research Scientist at UC Davis and Latin American Liaison of PIPRA, participating in the generation and development of programs with institutions across Latin America. Pablo can be reached at pazamora@ucdavis.edu.

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