The USPTO announced a public challenge in support of the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. The USPTO is asking the public to investigate and leverage the intellectual property data within the USPTO and combine it with other economic and funding data (e.g., SEC filings, FDA reporting, National Science Foundation grants and other funding sources) to “reveal new insights into investments around cancer therapy research and treatments.” Issues that may be explored include the peaks and valleys in the landscape of cancer treatment technologies, insights revealed by correlating R&D spending/funding to breakthrough technologies, and whether trace studies of commercially successful treatments from patent to product would informative.

A workshop will be held on Thursday August 25th, 2016 to assist participants with the challenge. The challenge concludes on September 12th and winners will be announced on September 26th, 2016.

The USPTO hopes that the information gleaned from the challenge will support cancer research and the development of new commercialized therapies. As noted by the office “[t]his will empower the federal government—as well as the medical, research, and data communities—to make more precise funding and policy decisions based on the commercialization lifecycle of the most promising treatments, and maximize U.S. competitiveness in cancer investments.”