Invitation to Tender for Innovation and Commercialisation of Orphan IP model analysis

MIDAS and GC Business Growth Hub wish to jointly commission an analysis of any existing programmes that facilitate the exchange or commercialisation of Orphan IP between companies and academia, using this to understand whether there could be a viable model that Greater Manchester could pilot. It would also be necessary to gather interest from firms - both those with Orphan IP but also SMEs that may benefit from greater access to it - to determine whether a pilot project to set up a form of IP exchange platform could work in Greater Manchester, creating a central repository of Orphan IP that programmes could be run through.

The research would include:

• Investigation into whether there are any existing programmes globally that have looked at dealing with Orphan IP at collective level
• Analysis of existing models around Orphan IP - whether successful or unsuccessful - what learning is there from existing models.
• Indication of what a reasonable range of outputs/outcomes should be from such a model - i.e. number of deals, value of deals value of commercialised IP, economic impact etc - based on existing models
• Identification of 15-20 large UK or international companies with Orphan IP programmes (e.g. BT, Unilever).
• Discussions with large companies with Orphan IP programmes to understand the level of interest in the project
• Roundtable consultation/s with innovative GM SMEs to assess demand and interest in developing & commercialising Orphan IP from large companies (to be organised in partnership with MIDAS/BGH)
• Identification of large companies with Corporate VC arms (e.g. CISCO)
• An assessment of how we could engage Corporate VC firms into the model