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CONGRESS has set up ground rules for the fiscal 2000 federal budget that leave little room for increased funding for science and technology programs. The House and Senate have each set up similar budget resolutions which are not supposed to exceed the spending caps established in the 1997 balanced budget agreement. However, the budget agreement does provide for a 5% rise, to $288.8 billion, for national defense programs and for unspecified tax cuts of up to $15 billion in fiscal 2000. Members working on budgets for the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy’s high-energy and nuclear physics program will see a budget cut in fiscal 2000, dropping from $18.8 billion this year to $18.0 billion next year. Although both houses allowed for a 10% increase, to $156.2 billion, for spending on federal health programs, the increase does not necessarily mean an equal increase for the National Institutes of Health.

THE COUNCIL OF COMPETITIVENESS, an industry-affiliated group, has sponsored a new analysis of U.S. R&D which warns that waning support for R&D threatens the U.S. with loss of its leadership in international innovation. The study, "The New Challenge to America’s Prosperity: Findings from the Innovation Index," compares the innovation capabilities in the U.S. with 24 other developed nations. In looking at three national indicators the study concentrated on the common innovation infrastructures that support R&D, cluster-specific conditions that look at particular industries, and the linkage between the two indicators.

Based on their analysis, the study concluded that the "U.S. is living off historical assets that are not being renewed." It concluded that investment in innovation peaked in 1985 and has been flat in the 1990’s. Because of this lack of investment, the study found that innovation in other developed countries – particularly Japan – has gained ground. Scandinavian countries are gaining, also, and are becoming an international center for innovation. Other countries gaining ground with innovation policies include Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel and Ireland.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES reports that federal research funding is shifting toward life sciences at the expense of physical science and engineering. The report indicates that the National Institutes of Health budget grew 31.2% between 1994 and 1999, but physical sciences research funding has dropped 11.2% since 1993 because of cuts in the defense R&D budget.

THE NATIONAL TECHNICAL INFORM-ATION SERVICE, in a joint venture with Northern Light Technology (Cambridge, MA) is opening a commercial Internet site to provide access to NTIS documents. Called gov.search, the site is located at. http://www.usgovsearch.com.

THE HOUSE passed legislation (H.R. 209) which would provide federal agencies with "two new tools for effectively commercializing on-the-shelf government-owned inventions," said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Science Committee. First, it removes existing impediments to technology transfer by streamlining notice and other procedural requirements involved in licensing federally owned inventions to non-governmental entities. Second, it provides agencies with the ability to license technology as part of a cooperative research and development agreement. H.R. 209 must still be approved by the Senate.

SC JOHNSON POLYMER signed an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement for the technology and patents of UltraKote Applied Technologies, Inc. (Framingham, NJ). The licensed technology includes a patented process and equipment technology for the improved application of water-borne overprint coatings used in the printing and packaging industry.

BIG BLUE (Bixby, OK) and CH₂M Hill (Denver) have licensed ion collider technology developed by International Cavitration Technologies (Bixby, OK) for soil remediation and wastewater treatment projects. The ion collider technology is used to remediate hydrocarbon-contaminated soil and water.

PRAXAIR INC. has provided its CoJet coherent jet technology for a 135-ton electric arc furnace at Birmingham Steel Corporation’s plant (Seattle, WA). Praxair currently licenses its CoJet technology to steel makers for installment on electric arc furnaces.

BIO-TECHNICAL RESOURCES and Ascorbex Ltd. have entered into an alliance for the commercial licensing of methods involving increased vitamin C production in vegetables, fruits and crops, as well as herbicide screening and a microbial process for vitamin C production.

ZENECA AGROCHEMICALS has reached a license agreement with Monsanto under which Zeneca will register its Touchdown herbicide for use on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, corn, and cotton in the U.S. Zeneca, Monsanto, and Pioneer Hi-Bred will dismiss lawsuits relating to the use of Touchdown on crops tolerant to Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide Roundup.

FORBES MEDI-TECH (Vancouver, BC) plans to license Novartis’ (Switzerland) use of Forbses’ cholesterol-lowering food ingredient, phytrol, in functional foods, dietary supplements, and OTC products.

MONSANTO has signed a product development and licensing agreement with diagnostics maker Strategic Diagnostics (Newark DE) for the development of rapid tests for detecting genetically modified ingredients in commodities or foods.

RTP PHARMA INC. (Quebec) has signed a broad license with Blue Ridge Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Greensboro, NC) a subsidiary of Idexx Laboratories Inc., to apply RTP’s Insoluble Drug Delivery technology to a range of water insoluble veterinary drugs.

HYDROMER (Somerville, NJ), has signed an agreement with CR Bard (Murray Hill, NJ) granting Bard exclusive rights to new low-friction coating technologies. Bard will apply Hydromer coatings to catheters and has rights to the company’s future coatings developments.

CHIREX (Stamford, CT) has an exclusive license for a new amino acid technology developed at Harvard University. The agreement grants ChiRex exclusive rights to use the technology, developed by Harvard chemist Eric Jacobsen, in pharmaceutical and agrochemical applications.

SCHERING-PLOUGH CORPORATION has purchased $27 million of ICN Pharmaceuticals’ stock as part of a licensing agreement for the use of ICN’s ribavirin as a combination therapy for chronic hepatitis C.

SALIX PHARMACEUTICALS LTD., (Palo Alto) has signed a letter of intent with Fujirebio Inc. (Tokyo) to negotiate a license under which Salix would obtain exclusive rights to Lafutidine, a third-generation anti-ulcer treatment now being developed by Fujirebio. Salix would receive rights to the drug throughout the world, excluding Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil and Argentina.

TEIJIN LTD., (Osaka) has signed a development and distribution licensing agreement with Byk Gulden Lomberg Chemische Fabrik GmbH, Konstanz, Germany, the international pharmaceutical division of the Bad Hamburg, Germany-based Atlanta group. Teijin has developing and marketing rights in Japan for Ciclesonide (inhaled glucocorticoid) for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

AGENNIX INC. and Santen Pharmaceutical Company have formed a research partnership for the development of recombinant human lactoferrin (rHL), a dry eye treatment developed by Agennix. Santen will receive exclusive rights to market the product worldwide and will pay Agennix $5.94 million plus royalties on net sales. Agennix has an extensive patent portfolio covering the DNA sequences, production and uses of human lactoferrin, a natural anti-microbial protein.

OSI PHARMACEUTICALS INC. signed a license agreement with BioChem Pharma Inc., replacing an earlier collaborative program focused on anti-viral drug discovery. Under the new agreement, OSI is licensing to BioChem Pharma rights to the companies’ joint technology in certain anti-viral targets. OSI will receive a $2 million up front licensing fee, plus milestones and royalties.

WYETH-AYERST LABORATORIES’ research division, Wyeth-Ayerst Research, has a research agreement with Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) Group PLC for the discovery and development of drug candidates based on human antibodies. Under the agreement, Wyeth will pay CAT $4 million per year for up to four years. The arrangement also includes research funding, potential library license fees and potential fees and milestones from product collaboration. The total value of the agreement is of the order of $70 million. Along with other research work, CAT will apply its proprietary functional genomics technologies to potential protein targets based on gene sequence information provided by Wyeth. Wyeth will also use CAT’s bioinformatics software and phage library technology.

AMERICAN HOME PRODUCTS CORPORA-TION and Apollo Bio-Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Cambridge, MA) will co-develop certain estrogen and estrogen-like compounds for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Apollo has granted AHP an exclusive worldwide license to its intellectual property and technology in this field.

GREAT LAKES CHEMICAL CORPORATION is buying NSC Technologies LLC, Monsanto Company’s pharmaceutical intermediaries business. The deal includes the basic intellectual property associated with unnatural amino acid technology for the production of chirally pure products for the pharmaceutical industry.

FUJISAWA PHARMACEUTICAL CO. LTD. signed a collaborative research agreement worth over $19 million with Quark Biotech Inc. (QBI), (San Ramon, CA), to discover gene targets for the development of novel therapeutics in stroke.

SALZGITTER ANLAGENBAU (Germany) has won the basic engineering contract for an acetic acid project in Iran. The 150,000-m.t./year unit will be built for National Petrochemical Co. at Bandar, Iman, using technology acquired from the Khimtechnolgia Institute (Severodonetsk, Ukraine). The process uses methanol and carbon monoxide feedstock and a rhodium catalyst.

SHANGHAI GAOQUIAO PETROCHEMICAL CORPORATION has selected Kellogg Brown & Root’s technology for a 37,500–metric-ton-per-year phenol plant that will be located in Shanghai. Kellogg Brown & Root will provide the technology license, process technology package and commissioning services for the facility.

BASF PETRONAS CHEMICALS Sdn. Bhd (BPC) has signed a maleic anhydride process licensing agreement with Huntsman Corporation. BPC will use Huntsman’s proprietary maleic anhydride technology in a maleic plant that will feed a butanediol unit in Gebang, Malaysia. The n-butane, fixed bed maleic plant will use Huntsman’s technology and catalyst. The downstream BDO and tetrahydrofuran plant will use Kvaerner Process Technology’s process of converting maleic anhydride into butanediol.

HICKSON DANCHEM (Danville, VA) has licensed specialty surfactant technology from Shell Chemical and will make alcohol ethoxycarboxylate at its Danville plant. Shell has licensed Hickson to use its Neodox trademark and sell the product worldwide.

SULZER CHEMTECH will supply technology for a $30-million ethanolamines plant planned by Oriental Union Chemical Corp. at Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The 40,000-m.t./year plant will be the first ethanolamines plant in Taiwan.

RAYTHEON ENGINEERS & CONSTRUC-TORS and Shell Technology Ventures (STV) have announced a process technology advancement for the production of styrene. Under this agreement, STV will be the exclusive supplier of the proprietary heating equipment and RE&C will be the exclusive licensor of the overall process technology.

KELLOGG BROWN & ROOT and Exxon have joined forces to introduce a licensing package that combines their respective ethylene technologies. The package - Selective Cracking Optimum Recovery (Score) – combines features of Exxon’s previously unlicensed gas-cracking technology with technologies from KBR.

DOW CHEMICAL has awarded Stork Engineering & Contractors (Amsterdam) a contract to build an ethylene plant for Dow at Terneuzen, the Netherlands. Stork will use Kellogg Brown & Root technology and basic engineering package to install the 600,000-m.t./year unit.

EXXON CHEMICAL EASTERN INC. will provide a license for its high-pressure tubular technology for the production of low-density polyethylene to China Petrochemical International Company (Sinopec) for Sinopec International Yanshan Petrochemical Company Ltd. Exxon will grant the license to an engineering contractor that will sub-license it to Sinopec International.

ABB LUMMUS GLOBAL and Targor, the polypropylene joint venture of BASF and Hoechst, have an agreement under which Lummus will market Targor’s Novolen gas-phase PP technology to third parties and develop basic engineering for licensed plants. Lummus recently signed an agreement under which it becomes the exclusive engineering firm for Nova’s Advanced Sclairtech polyethylene technology.

DUPONT and Bekaert Group (Kortrijk, Belgium) have formed an alliance to develop and market materials for thin-metal, flexible high-density circuits. DuPont says the products will permit more density packed electrical connections and smaller circuits in cellular phones and notebook computers. The companies will jointly develop process technology and products.

GMT MICROELECTRONICS (Norristown, PA) and Peregrine Semiconductor (San Diego, CA) have an alliance in which Peregrine will license to GMT its silicone-on-insulator (SOI) technology and GMT will supply Peregrine with foundry services, as well as develop its own line of products based on the SOI process.

LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES and Cypress Semiconductor Corp., are among 88 defendants named in a multimillion dollar lawsuit alleging "willful and deliberate" infringement of patents. The lawsuit, filed by the Lemelson Foundation, in the federal district court of Arizona, also named several other prominent electronics companies as defendants, including Compaq Computer, Xerox, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, Gateway 2000, Honeywell, General Electric, Nintendo of America, Raytheon, Rockwell International, Samsung Electronics and Tandy. The patents in question concern machine vision, automated identification and semiconductor manufacturing technology.

NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR CORP. will license its Reduced Swing Differential Signal (RSDS) digital interface technology for XGA Thin-Film-Transistor (TFT) Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) panels to Sharp Corp. (Japan). Both National and Sharp will provide chipset components for XGA TFT-LCD panels that incorporate RSDS technology.

TOSHIBA AMERICA ELECTRONIC COMPO-NENTS INC. now is offering several semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) cores, including PCI, USB, IEEE 1394 and AGP. The cores were licensed from Phoenix Technologies Ltd. as part of its system-level integration (SLI) development capability.

FLIP CHIP TECHNOLOGIES, L.L. C. (FCT) has licensed its flip chip bumping to Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (ASE) of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This agreement is the first step in a strategic business relationship between ASE and FCT, a joint venture of Delphi Delco Electronics Systems and Kulicke & Soffa Industries. The technology will be used primarily for devices which are to be assembled in ASE flip Chip BGA packages.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC. prevailed when U.S. District Court jury in Marshall, Texas found in favor of TI in a patent infringement dispute involving Hyundai Electronics America Inc. and its parent company Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd. The court awarded TI with damage amounting to $25.2 million after finding that Hyundai had infringed on two TI patents and determining that the patents were valid and the infringement was willful. The patents in question involve two processes used in semiconductor manufacturing that relate to automatically transferring work pieces – such as semiconductors – between two or more workstations in an assembly line.

CONSILIUM INC., a subsidiary of Applied Materials, received a multi-million-dollar order from Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp., a manufacturer of flat panel displays, for software licenses and services to control and automate its new thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) lab in Tainan, Taiwan.

MAGMA DESIGN AUTOMATION (Cupertino, CA) announced that Advanced Microsystems Devices Inc. (AMD) and Sun Microsystems Inc. have signed licenses for Magma’s new software tools. Magma is now shipping Blast Fusion, a tool set positioned as a complete physical design system for early timing sign-off of deep submicron designs, without the additional overhead of subsequent iterations of the design through synthesis.

LSI LOGIC CORP. and Amkor Technology Inc. have a licensing agreement that provides Amkor access to LSI Logic’s Enhanced Plastic Ball Grid Array (EPBGA) package technology, described as a key component in high volume system-on-a-chip integration.

ST MICROELECTRONICS INC. and SCM Microsystems Inc. have an agreement to develop and produce chipsets supporting the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) common interface architecture to make digital television set-top boxes open to multiple service operators. The open architecture will allow more consumer electronics OEMs and other manufacturers to utilize common set-tops in future digital TV offerings, ST said. ST has licensed SCM’s core silicon and software drivers for the DVB interface.

HITACHI LIMITED and Texas Instrument Inc. have signed an agreement for Hitachi to use TI’s digital light processing (DLP) technology to develop all-digital rear projection high definition televisions (HDTVs). TI plans to further develop the DLP technology to support high definition television (HDTV) applications with an aspect ratio of 16.9. Also, the companies will collaborate on the development of new, higher brightness projection optics, HDTV signal receiving technology and image processing chips.

July 28-30, 1999

Sheraton @ Fisherman’s Wharf

San Francisco, CA

Conference topics and workshops include Technology acquisitions, exchange and management in the next millenium; Manage intellectual property to increase shareholder value; European Community structure and strategies for global perspective or intellectual property; License in Japan and optimize strategic opportunities.

Contact: The Center for Business Intelligence, LLC, 500 West Cummings Park, Suite 5100, Woburn, MA 01801, Telephone: (800) 817-8601, Fax: (781) 939-2490

July 14, 1999

PLI Conference Center

New York, NY

Sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute. This program is designed to show you how to protect, maintain and enhance your valuable intellectual property assets. Contact: Practicing Law Institute; Tel: (800) 260-4PLI or e-mail – info@pli.edu.

July 19-23, 1999

Franklin Pierce Law Center

Concord, NH

This is the eight annual Advanced Licensing Institute offered by the Franklin Pierce Law Center. It provides a unique program of topics covering basic organization, and details of licensing and technology transfer negotiations and agreements. Contact: Franklin Pierce Law Center, 2 White Street, Concord NH 03301, Tel: (603) 228-1541 ext. 1173; Fax: (603) 224-3342, e-mail: bJohnson@fplc.edu

September 21-22

Venice Italy

Economic Growth for the next millenium through research, licensing and business development.

For program information and registration send e-mail to les-italy@studiotorta.it

Soft Cover 362pp $29.95

Edited by: Denis Gray and S. George Walters.

Industry-university cooperative research centers have revolutionized the way firms and universities interact with each other. Today, over seventy percent of industry-sponsored university research, is conducted within these centers. This book provides a practical guide on how to manage these increasingly important and complex linkage mechanisms. The editors and authors address every critical aspect of center management from start-up through technology transfer to succession planning.

Contact: Battelle Press, 505 King Avenue, Columbus, OH 43201, Telephone: (800) 451-3543

Published by BNA International $895.00

This new monthly journal supplies needs and analysis of the latest international development in the licensing of intellectual property rights.

Contact: BNA International, Heron House, 10 Dean Farrar Street, Louden SWIH ODX, England

Tel: (+44) 171-559-4801; Fax: (+44) 171-222-5550.

Published by Aspen Law & Business

Edited by Gregory Battersby and Charles Grimes

Published 10 times per year

The journal offers up to the minute, time saving guidance to structuring licensing agreements for every situation. (send for free trial issue).