[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 172 (Tuesday, September 6, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 61196-61198]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-21349]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Patent and Trademark Office
[Docket No. PTO-C-2016-0032]
USPTO Cancer Moonshot Challenge
AGENCY: United States Patent and Trademark Office, Commerce.
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
publishes this notice to announce the Cancer Moonshot Challenge, which
was launched on August 22, 2016, to enlist the public's help to
leverage the USPTO's intellectual property data, often an early
indicator of meaningful research and development, and combine it with
other economic and funding data. This challenge supports the goals and
objectives of the National Cancer Moonshot, a Presidential initiative
to speed up cancer advances, make more therapies available to more
patients, and improve the ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an
early stage. This notice provides the public with information on
participation and application requirements for the challenge, including
the judging criteria, submission requirements, and rules of
eligibility.
DATES: Challenge Deadline: The deadline for submissions is September
12, 2016, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST).
ADDRESSES: All individuals or entities who wish to participate in the
challenge must register and submit their entry through
www.challenge.gov.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information, please
contact Thomas A. Beach, Office of the Under Secretary and Director, at
571-272-8600.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. About the Challenge
Background
Cancer is undoubtedly a disease that touches all our lives. Ending
cancer as we know it requires the formation of new alliances. As
President Obama noted, getting this done isn't just going to take the
best and brightest across the medical, research, and data communities--
but millions of Americans owning a stake of it. By harnessing the power
of patent data and accelerating the process for protecting the
intellectual property that leads to cancer immunotherapy breakthroughs,
the USPTO is standing up and doing its part to help bring potentially
life-saving treatments to patients, faster.
The Challenge
With data released through the USPTO Developer Hub, users are
building rich visualizations of intellectual property data, an early
indicator of meaningful innovation and research and development (R&D),
and combining this data with other state or agency data, such as census
and bureau of labor statistics, and/or economic and financial data.
These types of visualizations demonstrate the power of telling complex
stories that lead to impactful insights and ask why the data matters.
Similarly, we challenge you to create and illuminate new trend lines
and interactive mappings of innovation with visualizations for all
types of cancer treatments and diagnostics by combining our data with
other unique data. Be sure to list the sources of your data sets (i.e.,
orange book data from the FDA), tools, and assumptions used to form
your conclusion and visualizations. Imagine your data visualizations
will be the foundation to 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, while maximizing U.S. competitiveness
in cancer investments.
Using analytic tools, processes, and other interoperable data sets,
we are challenging you to develop interactive visualizations and
stories that can help
[[Page 61197]]
reveal new insights to guide public policy and research to achieve the
goal of doubling the rate of progress toward a cure. For example, you
could address questions such as:
Trending:
What new insights can be revealed by correlating R&D
spending/funding to breakthrough technologies? How would you define or
cluster the broad spectrum of cancer treatments, therapies, and/or
diagnostics?
What would trace studies of commercially successful
treatments from patent to product tell us? What data insights can be
gleaned from understanding the time it takes bring patents to patients?
What are the peaks and valleys in the landscape of cancer
treatment technologies?
Policy:
If you were the Director of NIH or another agency, given
what you have learned from this patent data and your research, how
would you prioritize your cancer research budget? (The National Cancer
Institute's FY2014 budget was $4.932 billion.)
Based on cluster mapping of cancer treatments, therapies,
and/or diagnostics, what policy would you put in place to promote
certain technologies? For example, would you promote treatment to make
cancer a livable disease verses curing it?
Is there any measurable relationship between patent data,
clinical trial data, and time to it takes for the technology to be in
the hands of the patient? If so, how (and with what catalyst for
innovation and policy changes) would you advise the VPOTUS for the
Cancer Moonshot?
Resources
The USTPO has released a curated data set consisting of 269,353
patent documents (published patent applications and granted patents)
spanning the 1976 to 2016 period. This data and associated
documentation explaining our methodology can be found on the USPTO
Developer Hub.
Prizes
First Place: $5,000.00
Second Place: $3,000.00
Third Place: $2,000.00
More Information About the Cancer Moonshot Initiative
As the President's Cancer Moonshot Initiative looks to build
public-private partnerships with industry, governments, health systems,
non-profits, philanthropy, research institutes, patients, and academia,
those interested in advancing the Cancer Moonshot can join today by
visiting www.whitehouse.gov/CancerMoonshot.
II. Judging Criteria
Creativity & Innovation (20%)
[cir] Uniqueness and innovation in approach to revealing new
insights to guide public policy and research.
[cir] Concept should be original, fill a gap, or answer a question
in a manner that is not already available.
Evidence Base & Effectiveness (20%)
[cir] Provide meaningful insight, including potential actions and
discoveries, using patent-related data to better inform funding and
policy decisions or uncover insights into the cancer R&D process.
[cir] How did you arrive at and validate your story? Did you
include additional complimentary datasets to help solidify your story?
What additional knowledge sources did you use?
Value to Public (20%)
[cir] Concept should add value to the medical, research, or data
communities and policymakers, allowing them to make more informed
funding and policy decisions based on the patterns and trends of
innovation in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Usability (20%)
[cir] The design elements should attract, engage, and influence
actions from the public and policymakers.
Functional Product (20%)
[cir] The visualization should have demonstrable functionality as
described in project description.
III. How To Enter
By September 12, 2016, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, submit the
following items through www.challenge.gov:
A story (maximum 1,000 words). Written in English, tell
the story of your visualization and walk users through how to use your
visualization. The document must describe how your visualization
provides meaningful insight, including potential actions and/or
discoveries.
Access to and testing instructions for your submission.
This can be appended to your visualization description and does not
count toward the 1,000 word maximum.
Link to the submission. We will not accept any submission
without a link.
IV. Rules
To be eligible to win a prize under this challenge, an individual
or entity:
(1) Shall have registered to participate in the competition under
the rules promulgated by the USPTO.
(2) Shall have complied with all the requirements under this
section.
(3) In the case of a private entity, shall be incorporated in and
maintain a primary place of business in the United States; in the case
of an individual, whether participating singly or in a group, shall be
a citizen or permanent resident of the United States.
(4) Shall not be a federal entity or federal employee acting within
the scope of their employment.
(5) Shall not be a USPTO employee working on their applications or
submissions during assigned duty hours.
(6) In the case of a federal grantee, shall not use federal funds
to develop applications unless consistent with the purpose of their
grant award.
(7) In the case of a federal contractor, shall not use federal
funds from a contract to develop applications or to fund efforts in
support of a challenge submission.
An individual or entity shall not be deemed ineligible because the
individual or entity used federal facilities or consulted with federal
employees during a competition if the facilities and employees are made
equitably available to all individuals and entities participating in
the competition.
Entrants must agree to assume any and all risks and waive claims
against the Federal Government and its related entities, except in the
case of willful misconduct, for any injury, death, damage, or loss of
property, revenue, or profits, whether direct, indirect, or
consequential, arising from their participation in this prize contest,
whether the injury, death, damage, or loss arises through negligence or
otherwise.
Entrants must also agree to indemnify the Federal Government
against third-party claims for damages arising from or related to
competition activities. By entering into this competition, entrants
represent that the they possess liability insurance or are otherwise
financially responsible for: (1) Claims by a third party for death,
bodily injury, or property damage, or loss resulting from an activity
carried out in connection with participation in the competition, with
the Federal Government named as an additional insured under the
Entrant's insurance policy, if any; and (2) claims by the Federal
Government for damage or loss to government property resulting from
such an activity.
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By submitting an entry to this competition you represent and
warrant that your submission:
Is your own work and not copied (if we have reason to believe
that your submission is not your own work then we may not consider it);
does not contain any third party intellectual property rights
and/or content that you do not have permission to use; and
is not obscene, defamatory, or in breach of any applicable
legislation or regulations.
The USPTO reserves the right to cancel, suspend, and/or modify the
challenge, or any part of it, for any reason, at the USPTO's sole
discretion.
Submission Requirements
Your submission must use at least the cancer research
dataset provided by the USPTO.
Your submission must be relevant to a U.S. audience and
must be in the English language only.
You are responsible for the cost and expense (if any) of
sending your submission to us and, if your submission is selected,
either attending an awards event demo at the USPTO on September 26,
2016, in person or submitting a video of your presentation to be shared
at the event.
Only one project submission is permitted per person or
group. In the event of a dispute over the identity of an entrant, the
submission will be deemed submitted by the authorized account holder of
the email address submitted during the registration process.
Submissions that do not adhere to the requirements listed above
will be automatically disqualified.
Intellectual Property
Ownership of intellectual property is determined by the following:
Each entrant retains title and full ownership in and to
their submission. Entrants expressly reserve all intellectual property
rights not expressly granted under the challenge agreement.
By participating in the challenge, each entrant hereby
irrevocably grants to sponsor and administrator a limited, non-
exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license and right to reproduce,
publicly perform, publicly display, and use the submission to the
extent necessary to administer the challenge, and to publicly perform
and publicly display the submission, including, without limitation, for
advertising and promotional purposes relating to the challenge.
All entrants are encouraged to open source their code to
the extent possible as a continuing contribution to cancer research.
Dated: August 31, 2016.
Michelle K. Lee,
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of
the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
[FR Doc. 2016-21349 Filed 9-2-16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-16-P