PIPRA provides services to foundations, not-for-profit organizations, universities, international aid agencies, and governments.

Developing countries need better technology. In the next decades, advances in technology will drive poverty alleviation as we continue to address major challenges in health, agriculture, water, and energy.

But getting good technology to serve the needs of the poor is notoriously difficult. From design to delivery, complex decisions affect whether the technology will be useful and adopted by target households, whether sustainability can be achieved, and ultimately whether the technology can have the greatest possible impact on poverty. Through education, public information, and offering a range of support services, PIPRA improves the ability of organizations around the world as they work in research, development, and delivery of technologies for the poor.

PIPRA provides services to foundations, not-for-profit organizations, universities, international aid agencies, and governments – each with different needs, but all working toward the common goal of using technology to address global poverty.

PIPRA provides services in the following areas:

• Intellectual Property Rights
• Technology Scouting
• Licensing and Agreements
• Commercialization Strategy
• PIPRA Labs

Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property right (IPR) decisions upstream can play a key role in ensuring widespread access to innovations. In gaining access to technologies from both public and private sectors, IPR can be an important consideration. Organizations working to get better technology to the poor must also assess how to use IP strategically to reach downstream goals of development, manufacturing, and delivery. Sometimes the optimal choice is broad and free dissemination, but other times real impact on poverty requires using IP rights as incentives to engage other organizations’ resources and capital.

PIPRA can:

• Assess technology-specific IPR risks and opportunities.
• Support evidence-based decision-making by providing analysis of complex IPR issues.
• Advise on the optimal use of the public domain.
• Provide patent landscapes across a technology field that shed light on policy issues.
• Identify potential bottlenecks where IPR could block innovation.
• Develop project-specific IPR strategies that support public interest goals.
• Advise on institutional IP policy issues.
• Analyze opportunities within research, development, and delivery (RD&D) systems for better IPR management.
• Educate and provide networks for IPR professionals in developing countries.
• Develop educational materials for training a broad range of professionals including scientists, policy makers, attorneys, and administrators in the role of IPR in getting better technology to developing countries.

Technology Scouting

While there is widespread digital access to technology solutions through patent databases and other sources, legal, business, and technical skills are often needed to navigate the sea of information in a practical way. PIPRA offers services to organizations that integrate in-depth knowledge of the science with commercialization and legal analysis to understand the applicability and availability of technologies.

PIPRA can: - Analyze patent, literature, and other data sources to identify appropriate technologies. - Assess the risks and benefits of accessing technologies from various organizations. - Advise on potential substitute technologies that may be in the public domain and more easily accessible. - Work with practitioners to determine the availability of know-how, skills, and capital that may be necessary - complements to the technology itself in order to ensure its optimal use. - Provide information on IPR, regulatory, and commercial considerations to augment an organization’s technical decision-making capacity.

Licensing and Agreements

RD&D of technologies for the poor almost invariably requires cooperative solutions that transcend international boundaries, public and private sectors, and diverse cultures. Thoughtful agreements can make a strong foundation for a partnership, guarantee access to technologies on practical terms, and create future opportunities for getting better technology to the poor. Public sector organizations need high quality agreements that serve their goals as well as match their institutional mandates, but it often doesn’t make financial sense to have the capacity in-house to negotiate and draft agreements. PIPRA works with a worldwide network of attorneys on a pro-bono and reduced-fee basis to apply high quality expertise with experience in the types of contractual issues faced when developing and delivery technologies for the poor.

PIPRA can:

• Review, negotiate, and draft R&D, licensing, material transfer, manufacturing, distribution, and other agreements in partnership with attorneys in our network.
• Analyze agreements to ascertain how they can strategically support public interest and project-specific goals.
• Advise on institutional and national policy issues regarding the implications of agreement language and structure.
• Provide expertise on the use of humanitarian use language in agreements.
• Support the practical implementation of workable public-private partnerships.

Commercialization Strategy

A truly promising pro-poor technological solution has to meet multi-faceted demands. In addition to its technical merits, the technology must address complex adoption and use criteria for the chosen market, demonstrate a potential for sufficient socio-economic impact on the poor, and be supported by a sustainable business and/or delivery model.

PIPRA works with organizations to develop and implement strategies that consider the entire process from design to delivery. By asking tough questions and critically assessing options through the lens of impacting poverty, PIPRA can improve decision-making in organizations working in any stage of product development and delivery.

PIPRA can:

• Support organizations in defining a strategy to effectively reach their goals by providing analysis on issues specific to research, design, development, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of technologies to impact poverty.
• Advise on the potential for leveraging private sector innovation for pro-poor uses.
• Review business plans.
• Assess partnerships and consortia for potential benefits and risks.
• Analyze project-specific applications of common mechanisms used for getting technology to the poor -- including advanced purchase commitments, humanitarian use licensing, market segmentation strategies, and others.

PIPRA Labs

PIPRA’s research laboratories are based at the University of California, Davis and focus specifically on plant biotechnology, supporting agricultural projects for downstream commercial deployment and humanitarian application. Scientific research and development strategies take into consideration technical, as well as IPR, freedom-to-operate, regulatory, and other issues critical for successful commercialization. PIPRA’s laboratory and IP analysis staff work jointly in identifying and testing plant transformation biotechnologies to develop improved crops.

PIPRA can:

• Perform agricultural biotechnology research and greenhouse and field testing.
• Design research strategies that address regulatory issues in plant biotechnology.
• Partner in mining for key traits to address agricultural needs.
• Provide biotechnologies, DNA plant transformation vectors, with the potential to develop marker-free plants.
• Test biotechnology in crop or model plants (test traits, promoters, etc.)
• Offer plant transformation services for pre-commercial screening.
• Provide expertise in developing genetically engineered improved crops.