Industry committee  I think it has a lot to do with the sector. If Waterloo is software, that is something that goes to market quickly, so it makes sense for the IP to be residing with software. If you are dealing with pharma, MaRS Innovation has said they're only dealing with someone when the university and not the professors owns the patent, because they cannot take this and develop it and then have these issues.

Industry committee  There are also arguments that we could upgrade the antiquated databases of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office so that they could be searched more easily online. A lot of people say they can search online in the U.S. easily but cannot do it here. Another thing that a lot of the entrepreneurs I have talked to said was that we should let third parties contest an application before a patent is granted, because it's a great way to weed out some of the bad apples.

Industry committee  I was only going to say that some of those changes were made to deal with some of the smaller companies. They find that SR and ED can be onerous, and sometimes you need PricewaterhouseCoopers to fill out those forms. I work with a lot of small start-ups, and direct investment was to focus on some of them.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  I think you would want to find someone to hire, a private equity partner like Loudon Owen, who has already done it. You remember i4i; he made $250 million out of Microsoft on one patent. People like that are very interested in investing in patent funds that they could buy or license from universities, etc.

Industry committee  Exactly.

Industry committee  No, I think there's confusion between investing in patents and a patent investment fund. What I am discussing is a pure private equity model whereby, if you already have 50 patents and you want to sell off 20 to save some money or generate some cashflow for your business or cross-license to that fund, then this fund becomes a player in which a cross-licenser buys patents from Tony so that he can reinvest money into that.

Industry committee  I think it's really hard to put a number on it. I wouldn't dare try, but I do think, because I know money is always an issue, that some of these problems aren't necessarily financial, and we wouldn't want to just throw more money at the problem, throw more money into R and D. What we're talking about today is how we go from the page into product and what's missing there, and I think there are some solutions, such as what we've discussed today with regard to universities and with educating small and medium-sized businesses.

Industry committee  A patent investment fund could be a combination of private and public. There are private equity companies that would be very interested in doing this. These are not cheap. It would be upwards of $50 million to start a patent investment fund, but look at CPP, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Industry committee  Let's be clear. Today we're talking a lot about what we call technology transfer from universities to industry. That's only one piece of the IP puzzle. As a short answer I would say yes, the federal government has a great role to play, whether it's creating patent investment funds, whether it's having a single IP czar, for lack of a better word, who speaks for IP, whether it's different agreements dealing with the NSERC and other FedDev programs, etc.

Industry committee  That's why it's attractive.

Industry committee  Yes. Europe is already developing one. France has one already. China is starting one. Quite a few are developing. Japan has one. Korea set up a very aggressive one. They're emerging all over the world. These sovereign patent funds are being created to go up against the private patent funds that already exist out there and are highly litigious.

Industry committee  They would have bought them.

Industry committee  They get gobbled up in pretty early stages. I think an average would be around the $30 million mark. Tony, do you have an idea?

Industry committee  Yes, they are.