The final guest lecturer was Blake Prime who
specialises in intellectual property (IP) management in the chemical industry.
To start Blake defined IP as creations of the mind which can be inventions,
art, literature, symbols etc. then he distinguished between the main IP types,
these are patents, trademarks, copyright, trade secrets and designs.
IP’s are protected by law and allows
people to retain recognition and financial benefit of something they have
crated and is designed to create an environment that people can safely be
creative and develop ideas. Patents define how things work, trademarks are
brands and logos, copyright covers areas like art, literature, software etc., and
trade secrets are confidential information like the coca cola formula and
design is how something looks.
A patent allows you to claim the IP on something
that is crated e.g. a chemical which you own the right to for 20 years. Blake
stated that this is incredibly important for industries like pharmaceuticals
because hundreds of millions of pounds is spent on research and development.
This 20 year period allows those millions of pounds to be recouped, there is also
the chance to extend the patient for 5 years if due to the patent process
chemical structures are revealed too early.
For something to be patented it was to
be novel so that it is not known by anyone but the creators and inventive so
that it is not obvious to someone who is well trained in that area of specialty.
The chemical company BASF patient around 1,000 product per year and to date
have recorded 300,000 this shows how many unique products that a single company
can make.
Blake further highlighted the financial
impact patients have by using Viagra as an example. When Viagra was first patented
it produced sales revenue of around $2 billion per year, when the patient ran
out in 2013 sales in Europe, japan and Australia fell from $472 million to $146
million because other companies could use the chemical to make their own
products which other people can buy.
Trademarks
are unique design that acts as a recognizable logo for products and services
e.g. the apple logo. Trade secrets are confidential information that give a company
an advantage this can be a secret formula, company list or method of
production. All though they are secret it is perfectly legal for products to be
reversed engineered and other companies to use this information.
Copyright
is the probably the most common legal IP protection that people know as it applies
to creative work. This can be software code, films, TV shows, books etc.
Over
all this is wasn’t the most dynamic subject to learn about but it still had interesting
information especially about the patient and copyright side of industries.
Though I understand the desire to make things like medication cheap for people I
also understand that companies need to recoup the cost of research which they
then reinvest and how secrecy is important when designing something like drugs
or creative work because when the information becomes public it can be a race
to have designs and information patented.
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