Intellectual property assets are of extreme significance to the Pharmaceutical industry for innovator and for generic players as well. The structure of maintaining the type of IP assets in pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors depends on various factors, for instance, a company’s size, resources they possess, business practices they pursue, their objectives, their capacity to invest in research and development, and their particular areas of expertise. There are such research-based companies who attempt to develop new drugs or some new kind of instrument or equipment or some new processes in the healthcare sector. These kinds of business houses heavily depend on the development of intellectual property assets for their growth & reap the benefits of their investments at a later stage. Such kind of organisations recovers their expenditure on R&D through IP assets. Intellectual property assets are the primary value and worth escalators for such business entities. On other side generic players which otherwise simply copying the brand products after the expiry of product patent, they also need to develop a design-around strategy or early launch or early market strategy to reap the benefit of early going into the market. Further, sometimes, generic players can come up with some incremental innovation, which can be game-changer for them. (Eg. Patent licensing deal of KEPPRA XR by Alembic Pharmaceuticals (India) to UCB (Europe), the Success story of DYNAPAR AQ by Troikaa (India)).
Strong IP management and IP portfolio are very important for every biotech company. Once the biotech company starts innovating then they have to safeguard the technology through strong IP protection. A fine IP portfolio will also create business opportunities for business entities and attract investments in consideration of a business entity’s overall development strategy. All n’ All a sound IP strategy should work in synergy with the business strategy which will enable you to reap maximum returns on investment.
Excelon IP has helped business entities in obtaining various Intellectual property services in the pharmaceutical industry & we specialize in providing various pharma sector-related IP services and can proudly say that founder Sanjaykumar Patel had handled various prosecutions of KEPPRA XR patent portfolio during his tenure at Alembic Pharmaceuticals. That’s why we say “Excel Through Innovation”
Case Study 1Industry: Pharmaceutical Research Company
Project Requirements: Client was entering in the semi-regulated market from domestic market and was not having any experience of such a market. Also looking for a market-specific product portfolio without much complexity of IP issue.
Solution: After discussion with management about their objective, we developed a search strategy and performed the exercise of identifying products with bifurcation for the therapeutic segment, relevant patent with expiry, regulatory exclusivity with expiry, development complexities and market size.
The benefit to the business entity: After our proposed list of products with additional information, it became so easy for management to take business calls about the market-specific product as well as helped them to design their budget and product pipeline as well as development timeline in a very short time.
Case Study 2Industry: Biotech Research Company
Project Requirements: Client is developing T cell therapy process with some innovative features but was in the impression that such a process can not be patented. The client approached us to understand patentability and patent filing process.
Solution: We explained the whole process of patent search and patent filing and after understanding their invention, advised them to file a patent. Their second concern was the cost. So we advised them to take benefit of a government subsidy scheme for patent filing related activities.
The benefit to the business entity: After our suggestion, the client filed a patent on one process and also got a subsidy from the government scheme and also filed the second patent for another invention. Due to patent filing, they got some recognition as well as funding for further research.