At a conference a few years ago I was discussing chemistry over gin and tonics with an assoc. prof from the University of XYZ. This fellow was one of the solid journeyman chemists in our field with a good eye for projects and opportunity, but like most of us, he is a warm-up band and not a headliner.  Eventually, the prof confided that he was patenting his work partly to extend his publication list- like sawdust in flour.  He had done some interesting work with a late transition metal. As the evening wore on, I could see the fire of gold fever in his eyes.  He believed that his patents would bring a stream of money and notoriety to his program. It’s natural.

Big things can happen with university IP. Some universities have substantial royalty streams filling their coffers. The institutions are able to capture value from the inventiveness of their faculty and students. When it works, it can fund new buildings, institutes, chaired faculty, and a horde of students and post-docs. When it doesn’t work, and most patents do not lead to cash flow, universities have to pay the cost of the patent plus maintanance fees out of strained budgets. Foreign fees can add up to large cash payouts every year.

At a dinner recently, I had the good fortune to dine with one of the rock stars of our field- a true headliner. This fellow had met the King of Sweden and has basked in the accolades of we minor players and roadies ever since.  For good reason- he was exceptionally productive.

After the sixth bottle of wine had been drained at our table, jaws were wagging and bad jokes and war stories were making the rounds. Eventually the rock star lamented that he was tired of writing patents and wanted to get away from intellectual property.  Working with lawyers just took too much time.

Another acquaintance is also a rock star who has met the King of Sweden. He actually is in the licensing business with a company on the side and students who do, or at least used to do, research for their degrees that was also considered to be intellectual property.  He too has a list of patents longer than your arm.

I am betraying no secrets here. Patents are public documents. University patenting is well down the road since the public law changed.

I’ve written about this topic before. The nature of IP and the academy has changed considerably since Bayh-Dole has allowed universities to apply for patents that were funded with public funds.

But the question for today is this:  Of what value are patents on an academic resume? Should a WO patent weigh as much as a JACS paper. Should a US patent weight the same as a JOC paper? What if a candidate has more patents than papers? Should patents lead to tenure? How should this calculation work?

A patent is not trivial or cheap. A patent application has to survive a large amount of a certain type of rigor in the examination process. A patent may have involved a good deal of scholarship. A good patent may teach and claim compositions of matter and processes that are truly ground breaking.

But a bad patent based on work that was never actually done can share the same playing field as one that is genuine and valuable. The rigor of examination is more of a statutory process relating to obviousness, novelty, and utility. A citizen or organization is entitled to a patent under the Constitution, provided that certain conditions are met.

Nobody is entitled to a scientific paper. Scientific societies are in the business of encouraging scholarship by providing a venue for the screening and dissemination of written works by investigators. There is a pecking order in all fields, and chemistry is no different. A layered ordering of prestige and glory definitely exists and few are shy in their opinions about such ranking.

It is hard to argue that the scholarly path is not in the direction of maximum credibility. Patents are not officially peer reviewed by fellow workers in the field. But the patent literature is a vast reservoir of credible technical information that I think may be widely underappreciated.

So while a patent probably shouldn’t carry the same weight as a refereed paper in terms of scholarship, a patent can in principle represent a large amount of successful R&D. I would argue that it can be regarded as a type of commercial accomplishment that is worthy of a place on a resume.

A patent is, after all, a property right that can be bought and sold like a mining claim or mineral rights. It is a type of holding owned by the assignee but not necessarily the inventor. Patents also enjoy the assumption of validity by the courts, so knocking one down requires some determination and money by a challenger. A scholarly work requires only another paper contradicting the results to be brought under the unblinking eye of scrutiny.

In summary, I would offer that a published paper confers a sort of warranty of scholarship, knowledge, and expertise. A patent confers a property right. A patent may teach a good deal about certain arts and may well be bullet-proof in its authenticity. But a patent is not in the same league as a paper and shouldn’t be regarded as equivalent to a scholarly publication. However, a patent does represent a very real type of accomplishment that may be substantial, so discounting them should not be done either. Actually, a patent is one of the few real measures of accomplishment in a secretive industry. Patents are a plus and should figure into the total profile of a candidate.

One of the fun aspects of sales is doing booth duty at a trade show.  It is an opportunity to meet and greet lots of new folks and catch up with trade show buddies.  Watching an exhibition hall transform into a “show” is like magic.  When you show up with your booth at the hall the day before the show, the place is a wreck. Booths are under construction, carpet is going down, fork lifts are zooming all over the place, exhibitors are lined up at the show managers booth, bewildered sales people are trying to get their bearings, and haggard and cranky union workers are trying to get the whole illusion assembled by the approaching deadline.

Trade shows are venues where buyers meet sellers in bulk.  Buyers show up in droves to walk a few acres of floor space crammed with vendors showing their wares. Everyone is in full schmooze configuration. There is an abundance of literature and business bling. Most booths are 10′ x 10′ with rear curtains and some trade show furniture. Smaller companies bring booths that they assemble featuring a display frame, lights, and velcro panels. Larger companies pay to have the union guys assemble an expensive architectural wonder complete with meeting rooms and, in the EU, a bar with bartender.

Lots of wheeling and dealing gets done by those buyers that come to actually buy on the spot. A great many buyers are there to window shop and go back to the office to ruminate on their decision. 

What is less well known outside of this circle is that a good deal of competitive intelligence is being done as well.  Everyone wants to know who the competition is. Lots of browsing and innocent questions.  Competitor pricing is the magic that everyone wants.  But this information can be hard to get. In the specialty chemical world, prices are often given by quotation to qualified parties. Qualified in this context means that the query originates from a party who is actually in need of the material rather than the wiley competitor trying to get an edge in pricing.

Some trade show organizers will have a high paid speaker talk to the show attendees.  I was once on the “A-List” to get tickets to meet the speakers at a small social hour before the show.  I got to have an actual conversation with James Carville, Mary Matlin, Terry Bradshaw, and Robert Reich. It was very exciting and enlightening. 

Another side benefit of being in sales is the chance to dine in some excellent restaurants. When at a tade show, it is always best to get your reservations in early. All of the best seats in town get taken. 

At a trade show in Vegas a few years back, our hall was next to a room being used for auditions for some transvestite series for cable TV. I recall walking down the hall at the Sands past a long line of “ladies” waiting for their turn at audition.  They were dressed to kill. It’s Vegas, baby.  The details of some other events will stay with me to the grave.

A few years ago at a plastics show at the McCormick center in Chicago I counted 6 multilayer extrusion machines blowing film, multiple PET bottle machines running, and numerous die extrusion systems operating. People waited in line for an hour to get a free lawn chair.

Favorite destinations? Paris, London, New Orleans, San Francisco, Milano (beware pick pockets!), Basel, Seattle, Berlin, Bangkok, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Manchester.

In Manchester we had to walk the gauntlet past a mob of angry protestors in front of the trade show- they were pissed about animal testing done by one of the exhibitors. 

Berlin is a fascinating and cosmopolitan city and anyone who enjoys Europe should visit. 

As a chemical company grows, organizational changes occur that alter the manner in which things are done. Some changes are beneficial while others are detrimental. A beneficial change is one in which the process of order fulfillment improves in efficiency. Order fulfillment is the core activity of any manufacturing business. Improvements that do not affect order fulfillment may be little more than decoration.

A detrimental change is one in which order fulfillment is negatively affected. Any change that reduces the speed or increases the cost of order fulfillment is a detrimental change.  Some detrimental changes are unavoidable. Improvements in infrastructure due to growth may lead to detrimental changes. Increased overhead expense due to new warehousing, increased regulatory compliance costs due to crossing a volume threshold, upgrading the pots and pans, or any number of other “improvements” may lead to negative change. 

Equipment upgrades can easily lead to unexpected organizational changes. New equipment leads to new procedures and new failure modes.  A new piece of equipment integrated into a system can lead to modes of failure and risks that were unanticipated. New equipment can lead to new manpower requirements and new demands on infrastructure. Suddenly, a new piece of equipment can cause the reorganization of activity around it. Machines may be limited in flexibility, but people can change their work habits to accomodate the device.

On a day-to-day level, a company may not sense that it has undergone growth, but in fact it has. The acquisition of new equipment can change the manner in which a company operates over the long term.  This is especially true if it increases the capacity of the plant. Equipment upgrades that increase throughput will lead to increased sales and, hopefully, increase profit. Soon, more cash is available for more upgrades.

Where a company can go wrong is the failure to tend to the institutional changes that have to occur with increased growth.  A company that grows in the plant but not in the front office (the overhead suite) is one that finds itself slipping behind the power curve.  Suddenly, increased volume leads to increased chaos. Unless institutional changes are made, the system may become dangerously unstable despite rising receipts. 

It is interesting to watch the storm brewing around Mattel over it’s contract manufacturing in China. Initially, Mattel came out on the victim side, claiming that 21 million toys manufactured in China had to be recalled due to leaded paint, magnet, and choke-hazard issues. Now, it appears, Chinese quality control has been vindicated to a large extent and it’s Mattel that has egg on its face.

Mattel contracted with Chinese manufacturers to produce products that had small removable parts that posed a choke hazard to children. Whether the toys were of US design or of foreign vendor design makes no difference. Mattel should have been on top of the design questions before the injection molds were made. Period.  The Chinese vendors made product to spec. 

Mattel has issued apologies to various parties in China over the unwarranted accusations that Chinese manufacturing lapses were responsible for the massive toy recall.  This is a major hiccup for Mattel, much akin to a container ship hitting a sand bar. When a ship runs aground, it is the captains fault. When Mattel ushers its investors through a major business fiasco like this, the CEO, President, and a few VP’s must be made to take the hit personally. The Mattel toy disaster is just bad product development, which is a management exercise.  Putting a dangerous toy on the market is a liability they should be very familiar with.   

In the Mattel case, a major organizational shakeup is needed to knock loose the ossified Mattel managers who should have caught the design flaws. I don’t know about the leaded paint issue, but certainly choke hazards and dangerous magnets that can be swallowed by children are not part of some new problem.  Corners were cut and and now the guilty parties from management have to line up at the Guillotine. It’s a bummer, but it has to happen to save the Mattel brand.

Note added 9/22/07:  Mattel has apologized in a public apology to Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, among others.  It is unclear, however, as to whether the apology applies to the leaded paint issue. It’s too late for at least one character. The manager of the factory that supplied the Sesame Street figures containing lead paint was found hanged at the factory, an apparent suicide.

It must be very frustrating for Chinese officials to find themselves subject to negative publicity generated by foreign companies and amplified by their governments.  This Marxist-Capitalist chimera founded by Mao finds itself being out of control of negative information echoing around the world and within China itself.  Chinese leadership is much more accustomed to providing processed information in order to guide the populace to the more correct thinking.  It is like a comb carefully lining up all of the individual hairs to lie in the same direction. If the Mattel fiasco had been entirely internal to China, I wonder if there would be any imprisonments or executions? 

The cover story of the latest issue of C&EN is concerned with the “Global Top 50” chemical companies.  To nobody’s surprise, Dow, BASF, and Royal Dutch Shell occupy the top three positions again this year.  The dollar numbers are impressive enough, but have a look at the column on the far right of the table on page 14- “Return on Chemical Assets”.  This is an important column.  It signals which operators can squeeze the greatest value out of their plants.  The winner in this column is 11th ranked SABIC with a 30 % return on assets and reported 43 % operating profit margin.  Compare that with 2nd ranked Shell (11 and 9 %) and 3rd ranked ExxonMobil (6 and 2 %).  There has to be a story there.

On page 16 of the cover story, the figure titled “Narrowing In” shows the market coverage over several decades.  It is clear that the big chemical players exited the pharmaceutical business in favor of chemicals.  One of the euphamisms is that this is a return to core competencies.  A more cynical comment might be that the players fled from core incompetencies. There is truth in both views.

Another table shows R&D spending as % of chemical sales.  These numbers have been flat across the industry since Y2000.  An investor might look at this and conclude that the players are conservative, and that would be right. Chemical industry does tend to be conservative.  But a chemical catalog president would look at the numbers and proclaim that this is indicative of a cash cow for sales of specialty R&D chemicals.  OK, the growth is flat. But it is safe.

By 12:15 AM saturday we had copies of the latest and final installment of the J.K. Rowling franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  It was an evening of standing-room-only at the local Borders bookstore, elbow to elbow with muggle Potter enthusiasts.  Many were in costume but all were anxious to get their copy of the book and once again enter the magical world of Harry Potter.

As we made our way to the parking lot it became apparent that flyers had been affixed under the wiper blades of cars outside the store.  Under the orange afterglow of the evening we could see the colorful flyers festooned with Potter graphics and the congratulations to the reader on their early purchase of the book.  Then the flyer went on to reveal the the fate of the characters!  These flyers were SPOILERS!#&*@!  It was an unthinkable act of desecration forced upon innocent followers of the story. 

For the love of God!!  What kind of fiendish mind could conceive of this heinous act?!  Someone printed these flyers and then, when the moment was right, quietly planted them when anticipation was at its highest.  What mothers child could do this? Who are these sick puppies, these bomb throwing literary terrorists who could execute such a felonious theft of innocence?  Think of the children.

Well, anyway, we intercepted the flyer and tucked it away to protect some unsuspecting citizen from picking up this booby-trap from the ground and reading it.  Unfortunately, Th’ Gaussling suffered some acute exposure to this bit of printed poison. Bummer.

I keep running into people who claim that atmospheric CO2 levels lag atmospheric temperature rises rather than lead them. That is, higher CO2 levels are a result of global temperature increases rather than a cause.  I’m not a researcher in this area, so my opinion is approximately meaningless. But on basic principles, it would seem that the partial pressure (or mole fraction, really) of CO2 might be expected to increase in the atmosphere over a warming ocean containing carbonate. 

Aqueous CO2 equilibria is complicated by its reaction with water, but one should still expect that the decrease in solubility of CO2 in surface waters might have some bearing on the present atmospheric CO2 levels.  For a given dT of an aqueous system with dissolved CO2, how does the mole fraction of CO2 in the gas phase change? The last time I worked a problem like this Ronald Reagan was president. Sigh.

Th’ Gaussling will be leaving contrails over some of America’s greatest flyover states for a week in Chicago on business.  Ciao baby.

Th’ Gaussling will be spending a few days in a midwestern flyover state bounded in longitude by two rivers beginning with the letter M and in latitude by two states beginning with the letter M. This state’s name derives from the Ioway Indian word for “corn-fed” and produced a president named after a dam.