Article Review Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual Property Rights: Article Summary

The article details the various forms of intellectual property protection, the disadvantages of intellectual property protections, and why it is still beneficial to have such protections as a means to guard the ownership and use of other people’s inventions. The main forms of intellectual property protection are trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, patents, and knowhow agreements. Different forms of intellectual property protection work in different ways. For instance, trade secrets involve withholding information from the public with the aim of gaining a technical edge over the competition. On the other hand, patents grant monopoly rights to an inventor by preventing others from selling, using, or making a technology for a specified time period.

Critics of intellectual property protection hold that such protections slow down the use or advancement of technologies as developers have to obtain legal permission to use or adapt protected technologies. However, intellectual property protections have some crucial benefits. They ensure that inventors can make returns on their investments, particularly for inventions around biotechnology, science, and other arenas that have to do with products meant for human consumption, where developers assume extremely high liability risks. This encourages inventors to keep developing new ideas and discoveries for public benefit. The passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 opened avenues for researchers to protect ideas advanced in their research works through patents, options, and licenses that compel universities to offer some revenue-sharing incentive before researchers can disclose the same (Patino, 2009).

Based on the Bayh-Dole Act, a researcher can obtain a patent for novel ideas in their research work. The Patent Law 101 stipulates that one could obtain patent protection if an invention is novel, useful, and not obvious. However, the value of the assigned patent will depend on its scope and claims. For instance, if an inventor’s patent claims that an invention requires elements A, B, and C, then a similar invention that contains elements A, B, and E does not infringe on this claim. However, if the patent claims that the invention requires elements A and B, then the similar invention will be an infringement by virtue of containing elements A and B, and E would be considered irrelevant in the patent. In assessing the scope of a patent for a research work, the Federal Patent Office will look at the amount of prior art relevant to the particular research work as well as obviousness (Patino, 2009).

Prior art has to do with how extensively an idea has been reported to the public. In this case, the patent office will consider previously published abstracts, issued patents, published journal articles, and grant information in the public domain to assess the novelty of the idea for which a patent is sought. They will also test the idea for obviousness. For instance, a PHD student who finds that an existing chemotherapeutic drug reduces the risk of blood clots may apply for patent. The patent office will assess the scope of the patent by checking whether the same finding has been reported in other published research works. If it is established that a previously published study had found the drug to be beneficial but had not specified the effect on blood clots, the office may find the invention novel, but may reject it on the basis of obviousness.

The concept of intellectual property protection may come in handy in a primary research assignment that our research firm will be carrying out later in the year. The research is part of a needs-assessment exercise that was commissioned by a non-governmental organization focused on improving the lives of cancer patients. The non-governmental organization is seeking to develop an education and cash transfer program to assist families with children suffering from cancer in the target area. Through the partnership, the research firm will carry out an experimental study to determine whether the supplementation of cooking salt with iodine helps prevent cretinism among cancer patients in the area (McChesney & Lieberman, 2022). The research firm could apply to obtain a patent for the research findings. However, the patent application would fail the scope test if other publications showing the effect of iodine supplementation on cretinism in iodine deficient areas exist. At the same time, the patent application may be successful if the research firm can show that such supplementation works better to prevent cretinism among children with cancer, than adults, because such an idea has not been pursued.