The Protection of Intellectual Property

Intellectual property arising from Re[D is an important part of a company s knowledge asset and needs protection. 

There are three main types of intellectual property that are relevant to the R D Manager in a chemical or pharmaceutical company. These are inventions in the form of Patents, the company Trademarks, and Trade Secrets, often called Know-How. 

In the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries it is most important to obtain a patent covering inventions on new chemical entities, sometimes called compositions of matter . These composition of matter patents are of great value as they will dominate any future patenting activity by competitors, for instance on materials showing im- 

New chemical entities, including new intermediates and in appropriate cases new salts, enantiomers and polymorphs. 

New compositions, possibly containing known compounds but in different dosage amounts or forms. 

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When it comes to the legal requirements for the protection of intellectual property the position is not so clear-cut. For instance in the US the PTO issues patents on the basis of the date of invention, i.e. the date in the laboratory notebook, not the date of application as is the case with other countries. 

A person within the procurement agency should be identified as having responsibility for checking the patent status of a particular product or formulation and to recommend actions to be taken regarding the protection of intellectual property rights for the product. This person will often be a member of the legal department of the organization. 

When one draws a boundary around the system the general intention is to perform a safety analysis on the contents. Normally that would involve a deep investigation of the technology, its design, build and test and processes and procedures that have gone into its manufacture. However, in some cases, that information is simply not available to the party undertaking the analysis. There are a number of reasons for this but often it comes down to a lack of information sharing and the protection of intellectual property. 

The application of organic electrochemistry in industry is not equally broad compared to the number of publications [10]. This is an obvious statement and true for synthesis methods in general. Not every chemical method or reaction gets applied in industry. In addition, it has to be emphasized that it is more than difficult to judge from publications and patents if an electrolysis or generally speaking a reaction is actually applied in industry because of the protection of intellectual property. 

The protection of intellectual property rights is one of the strongest incentives for investment in scientific endeavors such as agricultural biotechnology. In the United States, patents, the primary form of intellectual property protection available for biotechnological inventions, can be issued on plants, non-human animals and micro-organisms. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued it s first patent on an animal in 1988, and the backlog of animal patent applications is well over 150(3). 

The American Chemical Society s Committee on Patents and Related Matters has prepared this fact sheet as a guideline for maintaining complete research records. Such records are crucial to the advancement of invention and to the protection of intellectual property rights. 

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