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Trilogy Tidings August 2010
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From the broiler that is the U.S. Southeast this summer, thoughts on two unrelated but important topics. The first has to do with setting the price for your new product or service, and the delicate role that your customers can play in your pricing study. The second topic deals with the future patentability of methods applied to clinical and research diagnostics, an issue raised by the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Bilski decision .
On a personal note, my wife's brother recently left this world in his late 50s, a victim of multiple sclerosis. He spent his last ten days in a residential hospice facility subject to a quality of life far superior to his previous five years. My advice to you and yours: Don't wait too long to engage hospice care; it can make all the difference at the end of life for patient and family members alike.
Regards,
Joe
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| Setting Prices Based on Customer Input
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Is it silly to ask your prospective customers how much you should charge for your wonderful new product? Maybe so - and maybe not. It depends upon how skillfully you set the stage and ask the question.
A former client recently asked for our help in conducting a pricing study, including a survey of his prospective laboratory-based customers. There is always a temptation to imagine what a customer would be willing to pay before you ask for the sale. But is there any way to actually obtain an objective response from a clearly biased source?
This request caused me to resurrect some old thoughts on including customer inputs in your pricing analysis. Check out my advice here.
One of the important pricing tactics is value-based pricing, which attempts to demonstrate cost effectiveness in your customer's hands. Some advice on leveraging cost effectiveness to demonstrate value and thereby achieve market penetration for your new product can be found here. |
| What Bilski Might Mean for Diagnostics Patents
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The Supreme Court's June 28 decision on the Bilski v. Kappos case has generated a lot of press and raised many questions about the future of so-called method patents. That case had to do with a method for handling energy hedge funds - not exactly something most of us care much about! But the finding in that case could well impact all kinds of method patents. Problem is, the Court left plenty of ambiguity on the table for future applicants and litigants to struggle with.
A mid-July article in Drug Discovery News nicely captured the potential fallout of Bilski in pharma and diagnostics intellectual property circles. Their conclusion: Bilski will have minimal effect on pharma but perhaps significant effect on diagnostics because diagnostics suppliers rely much more on method and process claims in their patents, especially process claims. If you're a diagnostics player you just might want to check with your IP staff and advisors on this issue. They may not be able to provide a definitive answer today, but tracking the USPTO and future court decisions could be a worthy activity. |
