BlueDot, a Canadian company that helps decision-makers prepare for and response to infectious disease outbreaks, was profiled in the Toronto Star for their work in tracking the Zika virus. The…
Dr. Stacey Ivanchuk, MaRS Innovation’s director of intellectual property, was quoted in Denise Deveau’s article, “Intellectual property protection is a game small businesses can’t afford to lose,” for the Financial Post on September 26, 2014 regarding the importance of protecting intellectual property for small businesses.
Here’s an excerpt:
Stacey Ivanchuk, director of intellectual property for MaRS Innovation in Toronto, says that protecting a startup’s technology is important especially from an investor’s perspective.
“One of the first questions investors will ask a company is, what is your IP position? To them it’s something they can talk about as an asset and shows that you are distinguishing yourself,” [Dr.] Ivanchuk said.
Ivanchuk said businesses run the gamut from doing nothing to protect their ideas to filing for patents on every idea that comes out of a brainstorming session. “Too early is not good because it can be a waste of money if the proof you expected down the road doesn’t happen,” she said. “But if you wait too long someone might beat you to the punch.”
The article also quotes Atul Asthana, CEO of Kaypok, a tech start-up in the text analytics space spun out from York University in partnership with MaRS Innovation:
In the high tech world especially, it’s not always easy to determine whether something should be protected or not, according to Mr. Asthana. “You have to be able to enforce it. If you do it poorly, you will be giving your ideas away and spending a whole bunch of money. It can become a real cat and mouse game sometimes,” he said.
The MaRS Innovation Industry Access Program (MI-IAP) is a simple, formalized process for marketing early-stage technologies to MI’s industry partners: Baxter, LifeLabs (formerly CML Healthcare), GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Merck.
The program’s goal is to secure funding for researchers within MI’s membership through these collaborative, strategic R&D partnership programs.
First run in November 2013, the MI-IAP allows researchers to easily determine whether an industry partner is interested in co-developing their technologies. The application process is deliberately brief at the outset.
“Last fall, we received 28 statements of interest, 12 of which we invited to submit a non-confidential summary package,” said Ben Rogers, director, Technology Transfer & Scouting. “Of these, six have been invited for a technology presentation with an industry partner. We’d like to see all of those numbers grow during this application round.”
The program will also make it easier for researchers to find prospective industry partners.
CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange featured Granata Decision Systems, one of the first UTEST companies incubated through that program for early-stage technologies by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto, in their program on Wednesday, November 28, 2013.
The data-driven company is one of eight to join the inaugural cohort for OneEleven, a new accelerator funded by OMERS Ventures, the Ontario Centres of Excellence, Ryerson University and other industry partners to support mature, sophisticated entrepreneurs tackling big data problems.
TORONTO, Dec. 6, 2012 — Kaypok Inc., a start-up company whose technology delivers insight into unstructured big data, today announced that it has selected Zync as its agency of record to create and launch Kaypok’s brand globally.
Kaypok Inc., which was spun off from York University research with support and funding from MaRS Innovation, filters, categorizes, identifies meaning and measures the root cause and emotions buried within unstructured text to understand what people are saying and feeling. Kaypok Inc. launched nationally at the iStrategy Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto on December 4, 2012.
TORONTO (December 4, 2012) — Companies are drowning in a sea of big, unstructured, noisy data. Whether it’s social media chatter, email or survey results, how do you filter the noise and take action?
Kaypok Inc., a company spun off from York University research with support and funding from MaRS Innovation, uses a contextual natural language process to automatically interpret the meaning of raw data — without analysts, advance preparation, special databases or lag time.
Read the start-up company profile of Kaypok Inc. on the MaRS Innovation website.
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