Costs of patents

Estimate the cost of patenting a new product in the form of three related patents, each in 6 conntries (excluding significant patent conrt fees). 

Because patents are limited in their effect in a specific country, a company with a pioneering drug may find itself suing patent infringers in a number of other countries. Usually these actions are in countries where the patent system is not as strong as that in the United States and the major European countries. The direct costs of patent litigation are usually lower outside the United States, but the time requirements can be just as extensive. 

My personal feeling is that the cost of patenting is relatively small compared to the cost of further research cind development and market research. Generally speaking, people tend to file for patents and prosecute them fairly quickly, with very little assurance that they are going to have any commercial products. 

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international agreement that extends the time before formally moving forward on fifing the patent by another 18 months. Individuals may request this to gain another 18 months to further refine the final product and decide if the idea merits investment of the final costs of patenting. 

In the United States and other countries, some legislative initiatives aimed at restricting the use of Pb have failed. This failure spurred research for solder replacement alloys. Several corporations and universities devised Pb-free solders, some of which were patented. As is the case with any patented item or process, the rights to invention reside with the inventor or sponsoring corporation in the short term, and several of these alloys may not be used freely. In some cases, only slight modifications in alloy composition separate corrunonly available solder alloys from patented solder compositions. The cost of patent licensing, whether by the end user or solder manufacturer, will be borne largely by the end user. 

We have not indicated the reagents employed in the reactions by which ethylene and propene are converted to the compounds shown Because of patent requirements different companies often use different processes Although the processes may be different they share the common characteristic of being extremely efficient The industrial chemist faces the challenge of producing valuable materials at low cost Success in the industrial environment re quires both an understanding of chemistry and an... 

The three main sources of competitive advantage in the manufacture of high value protein products are first to market, high product quaUty, and low cost (3). The first company to market a new protein biopharmaceutical, and the first to gain patent protection, enjoys a substantial advantage. The second company to enter the market may find itself enjoying only one-tenth of the sales. In the absence of patent protection, product differentiation becomes very important. Differentiation reflects a product that is purer, more active, or has a greater lot-to-lot consistency. 

The first criterion was associated with improved secondary and tertiary petroleum recovery processes. This is the justification for the patent appHcations issued to the Dow (50) and Exxon (51) corporations. The additional costs of production and the increased adsorption of such modified water-soluble polymers are detrimental to the commercial appHcation of such polymers and even the academic studies in this area have decreased in recent years. 

Other acetyl chloride preparations include the reaction of acetic acid and chlorinated ethylenes in the presence of ferric chloride [7705-08-0] (29) a combination of ben2yl chloride [100-44-7] and acetic acid at 85% yield (30) conversion of ethyUdene dichloride, in 91% yield (31) and decomposition of ethyl acetate [141-78-6] by the action of phosgene [75-44-5] producing also ethyl chloride [75-00-3] (32). The expense of raw material and capital cost of plant probably make this last route prohibitive. Chlorination of acetic acid to monochloroacetic acid [79-11-8] also generates acetyl chloride as a by-product (33). Because acetyl chloride is cosdy to recover, it is usually recycled to be converted into monochloroacetic acid. A salvage method in which the mixture of HCl and acetyl chloride is scmbbed with H2SO4 to form acetyl sulfate has been patented (33). 

The Certificate of Correction. Another mechanism for correcting the patent is the "Certificate of Correction," which is essentially a petition filed by the patentee to correct minor errors in the patent produced either by the U.S. PTO or inadvertentiy by the appHcant. Unlike the Notice of Errors, a Certificate of Correction does result in an additional pubHcation from the U.S. PTO, and anyone requesting a copy of a patent in which a Certificate of Correction has been filed will also obtain the Certificate of Correction. A Certificate of Correction reflects amendments made during the examination of the patent which were entered by the examiner but not found within the issued patent. The omission of such amendments can be in the body of the patent or in the patent claims. The Certificate of Correction may also be used to correct errors in the issued patent which were not present in the patent appHcation when it was filed. If the error was caused by the patent appHcant prior to or during examination, the patent appHcant bears the cost of filing and... 

Payment of maintenance fees is required at the fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-year anniversaries of the date of issuance of the patent. The costs of these maintenance fees vary from year to year depending on the regulations of the U.S. PTO. The first maintenance fee tends to be fairly slight, allowing for the further enforcement of the patent with Htde economic burden on the patentee. The second maintenance fee tends to increase the payment from the first maintenance fee by a factor of two. The third maintenance fee tends to be substantial, increasing the payment from the first maintenance fee by a factor of three. 

Databases differ in their strengths and weaknesses, as well as in their focus. As a result, dupHcate searches carried out on different databases generally produce different results. This has been demonstrated in comparative studies of retrieval results for a group of patent databases (31,32). Participants in one study (31) made an effort to develop optimal search strategies in each database tested, yet in no instance did one file produce perfect retrieval. Both investigations (31,32) found that results from the various databases complemented each other. As a result, searchers are counseled to use multiple databases whenever possible. There is no pat answer to the question of how many files to use or which files to use however, more files mean more expenditure, and searchers must develop their own cost—benefit relationship. 

The sales of oral diuretics are declining, and are forecast to continue their decline in constant dollars during the 1990s (119,120). Several possible explanations can be offered for these trends. The patents of market leaders are expiring, lea ding to the introduction of generic brands at ca 40% below the cost of the branded market leaders physicians are switching to newer treatments for hypertension, eg, calcium channel blockers and... 

This process was not acceptable for several reasons low yields, poor quaUty, and the high cost of bromine. Later, at BASF, a process was developed for the manufacture of ali2artn by the caustic fusion of anthraquinone-2-sulfonic acid (so-called silver salt) which was made by sulfonating anthraquinone with sulfuric acid. This process was patented in England on the 25th of June, 1869. One day later, W. Perkin appHed for a patent for the manufacture of ali2ariQ by a process almost identical to the German process except that the "silver salt" was prepared as follows ... 

Miscellaneous Direct Costs Estimates for the cost of maintenance and repairs, operating supplies, royalties, and patents are best based on company records for similar processes. A rough average value for the annual cost of maintenance is 6 percent of the capital cost of the plant. This percentage can vaiy from 2 to 10 percent, depending on the severity of plant operation. Approximately half of the maintenance costs are for materials and half for labor. Royalty and patents costs are in the order of 1 to 5 percent of the sales price of the product. 

Without a doubt, tetrafluoroborate and hexafluorophosphate ionic liquids have shortcomings for larger-scale technical application. The relatively high cost of their anions, their insufficient stability to hydrolysis for long-term application in contact with water (formation of corrosive and toxic HF during hydrolysis ), and problems related to their disposal have to be mentioned here. New families of ionic liquid that should meet industrial requirements in a much better way are therefore being developed. FFowever, these new systems will probably be protected by state of matter patents. 

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