Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Sep;3(5):493-506.
doi: 10.1111/j.1751-7915.2010.00172.x. Epub 2010 Jun 1.

Intellectual Property: a powerful tool to develop biotech research

Diego Giugni  1 , Valter Giugni
Affiliations

Intellectual Property: a powerful tool to develop biotech research

Diego Giugni et al. Microb Biotechnol. 2010 Sep.

Abstract

Today biotechnology is perhaps the most important technology field because of the strong health and food implications. However, due to the nature of said technology, there is the need of a huge amount of investments to sustain the experimentation costs. Consequently, investors aim to safeguard as much as possible their investments. Intellectual Property, and in particular patents, has been demonstrated to actually constitute a powerful tool to help them. Moreover, patents represent an extremely important means to disclose biotechnology inventions. Patentable biotechnology inventions involve products as nucleotide and amino acid sequences, microorganisms, processes or methods for modifying said products, uses for the manufacture of medicaments, etc. There are several ways to protect inventions, but all follow the three main patentability requirements: novelty, inventive step and industrial application.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
EPO contracting states. Extension states – states recognizing European patents upon request: AL: Albania; BA: Bosnia and Herzegovina; RS: Serbia (legal successor of the former State Union of Serbia and Montenegro into the Cooperation and Extension Agreement) (European Patent Office, 2010).
Figure 2
Figure 2
PCT contracting states (141 on 1 July 2009) (World Intellectual Property Organisation, 2009).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Share of countries in biotechnology patents 2005. Sources: OECD, Patent and REGPAT Databases, June 2008 and EPO Worldwide Statistical Patent Database, October 2007.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Share of biotechnology patent applications in the period 2002–2004 per country/region. Source: ETEPS. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) calculations. RoW, rest of the world.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Distribution of biotechnology patent applications in the period 2002–2004 by sector. Source: ETEPS.
Figure 6
Figure 6
2008 patent applications per origin and technologies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Reinhold Publishing Corporation. Robert Calvert – The Borden Company; 1964.
    1. European Patent Office. 2010. ) Member states, map. [WWW document]. URL http://www.epo.org/about‐us/epo/member‐states.html.
    1. World Intellectual Property Organisation. 2009. ) Map of member states. [WWW document]. URL http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/list_states.pdf.
    1. World Intellectual Property Organization. World Intellectual Property Organization; 2007.
    1. European Patent Office. 5th. European Patent Office; 2006.

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources