Chemical companies to sign up for on-line IP exchange

Although e-commerce is traditionally associated with the on-line buying and selling of commodities, it is also making inroads into more intangible sectors.

You can't touch it, feel it, smell it or taste it, but intellectual property (IP) is a product that can be bought and sold like any other. Furthermore, its intangible nature makes it eminently suitable for trading over the Internet.

Yet2.com is a web-based global marketplace for the exchange of technology among leading corporations and government agencies. Based in Cambridge, MA, US, and with offices in Europe and Asia, yet2.com's aim is to give companies an efficient method of streamlining research and development and extracting value from intellectual assets.

Owners of technology write functional descriptions of their licensable discoveries and list them on the site; seekers of technology use yet2.com's tools to find the technology they need. Yet2.com then facilitates an introduction and once the parties have demonstrated their good faith, they evaluate, negotiate and come to an agreement off-line.

Every continent, every industry, every type and size of organization, and every job function is represented among the registered users who make use of the site to keep abreast of relevant developments, identify technical solutions, create product improvements, and start new business ventures. Approximately one third of visitors to the site and listed technologies come from outside the US.

The facility has a number of advantages over on-line patent databases. Rather than deliberately obscuring the technology to protect an idea from infringement, yet2.com features functional abstracts written in plain English to communicate its potential applications and benefits. Furthermore, every technology in yet2.com is available for license, so there are no dead-ends.

Earlier this year yet2.com introduced TechPak, which is claimed to be the first standard for the marketing of licensable technology on the Internet. Designed to give technology licensing professionals the necessary information to streamline the process of technology transfer, TechPak is a listing template that captures the relevant technological and marketing data about technologies and know-how. Not only does it provide organisations with a common internal platform for the documentation of technologies and their applications, but it allows other companies from any industry to determine if a given technology has a potential application in their area of interest.

'Technology professionals in the new global economy demand a more practical means of identifying and marketing unlicensed technologies than the traditional method of patent listing,' said Chris De Bleser, ceo of yet2.com. 'The TechPak Listing Standard is a more efficient way of describing technology because it concentrates on marketing technology for the purpose of innovation as opposed to obscuring it.

'Finally, there is a common language for providers and seekers of technology from all fields,' said Ralf Dujardin, IP manager central research, Bayer. 'The new standard of yet2.com is creating transparency in the market for technology transfer. In addition, it is helping companies to put a value on their intellectual property and to manage it.'

The company stresses that the site is not aimed just at large corporations. 'Most of our current introductions are between large and small companies. Small companies have found useful technologies that help them meet a market need not large enough for the large corporation. And large companies have found brilliant ideas from smaller companies that don't have the resources to commercialise them effectively.'

Among the chemical companies offering intellectual assets through yet2.com's marketplace are: 3M, BASF, Battelle, Bayer, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Mitsui Chemicals and Sumitomo Chemical.