+ Patentability in the Global Landscape
Our attorneys have earned the position as trusted and strategic advisors to multinational corporations and emerging companies alike, and have expertise in determining the various levels of patent protection available throughout the world.
In the United States, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face tremendous challenges regarding patent eligibility in light of the Supreme Court decisions in Mayo v. Prometheus and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics.
Our clients face equivalent patent-eligibility concerns abroad, particularly with issues of determining the right time to file a patent application due to conflicting data and disclosure requirements throughout the world. In Canada, for example, Canadian Supreme Court decisions have effectively heightened disclosure requirements in the case of pharmaceutical patents. Similar issues arise in Eastern Asia, where Patent Offices will reject patent applications that have claims to pharmaceutical compounds due to lack of data in the specification as it was filed. On the other hand, in Europe, the disclosure requirement is generally met, so long as the data shows that the desired effect of a particular drug is “plausible,” and further data to support the patent may be accepted post-filing. We counsel our clients through these conflicting systems to help determine the best timing to file in each jurisdiction, ensuring that disclosure requirements are supported with adequate experimental data, while limiting the risk of a competitor beating them to filing. We believe that the only way to properly serve our cutting-edge clients in such a competitive and rapidly-developing area as the life sciences, is to be at the forefront of the patent law development throughout the world.