Citing the COVID-19 crisis, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has started Patents 4 Partnerships, an intellectual property (IP) marketplace platform. The platform allows the public to search patents and published patent applications related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are available for licensing. The USPTO eventually intends to expand the platform to include other technologies.
The contents of the database are taken from public sources, including the USPTO, the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC Business), the AUTM Innovation Marketplace (AIM), universities, and a number of federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs databases.
In the past, it has been difficult for patent owners and licensees to connect. For a licensee, the usual route to license technology is to search for patents or published applications in the area of interest, determine the ownership, and connect with the patent owner. Patents 4 Partnerships platform eliminates these inefficiencies and allows a licensee to search and compare potential technologies in one place. The expansion of the database to include intellectual property beyond COVID-19, such as cancer, neurology, metabolic disease, and infectious diseases, will significantly help the development of solutions to improve public health.
