01 February 2014

Calling All Pharma and Biotech Attorneys: Survey on Filing Strategy

TJSL Research TeamAre you a patent attorney working in the life sciences sector?  Would you be interested in new research insights into international patent filing strategies for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies?  And – most importantly – would you be willing to spare just 15 minutes to complete a short survey to assist researchers at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law to obtain those research insights?  If so, please read on…

I was contacted this week by Richard Schurman, who is one member of a team led by TJSL Adjunct Professor Randy Berholtz engaged in a year-long IP Honours Research Project with the goal of assisting bio-pharmaceutical companies and patent practitioners in deciding which countries to file for patent protection.  (Richard is second from the left in the above photo.  The other pictured are, from left to right, co-researchers Derek Midkiff, Sumant Pathak, Katherine MacFarlane and Vince Davies.)

According to a TJSL media release:

The goal of the honours research project is to provide life science companies and patent practitioners with a comprehensive guide regarding the countries where biopharma patents are filed, the countries where life science companies and patent practitioners should file for patent protection, and the factors that life science companies and patent practitioners should take into consideration when strategizing for international patent protection.

The project includes a survey of practitioners, for which each member of the team has taken on a different region of the world.  Richard is responsible for the Asia-Pacific region, which of course includes Australia and New Zealand.

Importance of Input from Australasia

As regular readers of this blog will be aware, Australia has an active pharmaceutical industry, and a market in which drug originators compete with generic manufacturers for sales of unpatented products.  Patents thus play an important role in the Australian pharmaceutical market, and litigation over blockbuster drug patents is not uncommon.  Current, and recently-concluded, cases in the Federal Court of Australia have involved drug originators such as GlaxoSmithKline, Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare, H Lundbeck, AstraZeneca, Albany Molecular Research, Sanofi-Aventis and Wyeth, and generic manufacturers such as Alphapharm, Sigma Pharmaceuticals, Aspen Pharma, Sandoz and Apotex.

The situation in New Zealand is a little different.  For government-subsidised drugs (i.e. the majority of pharmaceutical sales) there is no competition for sales to the end consumer.  Instead, subsidised medications are purchased on behalf of the New Zealand government by its agency Pharmac, which issues multi-product tenders annually for the supply of selected drugs.  Patents are therefore significant in New Zealand because they can determine the ability of generic manufacturers to participate in the tender process.

Strategies for filing patents into Australia and New Zealand are therefore important.  And, of course, strategies for filing internationally are important to companies and research institutions conducting work in Australia and New Zealand on new medications, treatments and therapies.

Responses to the TJSL survey from attorneys practising in Australia and New Zealand will therefore be of great value to the project.

Who Is Eligible to Participate?

The survey is open to patent attorneys from any country who prosecute patents in the biotechnology or pharmaceutical sectors.  All personally identifiable information will be kept confidential. It should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.  Respondents have the voluntary option of entering in their email address to receive the survey results when they are released, and to be considered in a drawing for one of several gifts.

To Find Out More…

If you have any questions about the project or the survey, you can email Richard Schurman directly at schurmrh@tjsl.edu. The results of the survey will be released on 11 April 2014 in San Diego, at a public seminar event with panel discussions on the evolving field of international patent law.

0 comments:

Post a Comment


Copyright © 2014
Creative Commons License
The Patentology Blog by Dr Mark A Summerfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.