A Japanese local government Kawasaki-city, which plays an active role in patent licensing between large companies and SMEs as presented here, has set out on a new endeavor. Kawasaki-city invites creators to an IP business matching event to ask them to propose applications of patented technologies of participant large companies. For this, Kawasaki-city works with an agent company CREEK & RIVER to ask dispatch of the creators. Here is a press release (in Japanese) for this project, published by CREEK & RIVER.

In this scheme, the key is whether or not the creators can propose specific products that SMEs are most interested in implementing such patented technologies. Also, extra care should be taken in handling the ideas proposed by the creators. I just sent a query to Kawasaki-city about how they handle possible rights of such proposed ideas, but not yet received a response.

In order to increase utilization of patents, there seems to be a need for development of such new applications. Actually, Xinova has issued the Request for Application (RFA) to identify new applications for an existing technology of its customer in November 2017. I’m wondering if universities may also need such an service to explore possible applications for their technology seeds. Anyway, it would be necessary to study how to valuate such ideas of new applications and how to reward the inventors, especially when working with outside persons.