Hosted by Philip Webber on 9 July 2020,  this webinar covers what can be patented in the medical and biotech fields, and looks at some of the special requirements and rules that apply.

Patents on medicines are common, but can you patent a gene or a protein? A bacteria, a transgenic plant or a transgenic animal?  Whilst the general patenting rules apply to all of these inventions, there are a number of issues that apply only to inventions in the medical and biotech fields.

Patents are vitally important for the pharmaceutical industry – it can take up to US$1 billion to bring a new therapeutic drug onto the market. Without the patent system to protect such investments, there would be no new medicines. Patents and patent applications are also particularly important to small biotech companies because they are often some of the few valuable assets that biotech companies can present to potential investors when seeking investment.