Pharmaceutical Property Intellectual and Tangible

Pharmaceutical Property

Intellectual and Tangible Property Rights and the Pharmaceutical Industry: Current Rends and General management

Protecting Tangible Property Rights

Protecting its tangible property is one of the most essential property management tasks of any pharmaceutical company; it is through the company's physical assets that capital can be raised to further research and development, expand operations, and continue producing both intellectual and tangible property in the form of drug formulas and the actual manufacture of medicines (Ghauri & Rao 2008). It has been suggested that removing the costly research and development phases of drug production from a dependency on tangible property through increased governmental and academic funding would benefit the pharmaceutical industry by limiting the likelihood of infringement upon tangible property rights (Ghauri & Rao 2008). This would also lead to problems deriving the same profits from exclusive patents on tangible and intellectual property, however.

The tangible assets of a pharmaceutical company are not limited to the products it manufactures, but also include the facilities of the company and all of its equipment. In this industry, tangible property such as specialized equipment can be stolen as intellectual property -- knowledge of how the equipment is designed -- and thus in order to protect all of the company's tangible property, managers must limit the areas of knowledge different employees have regarding the manufacturing processes of various drugs. The protection of tangible property in the pharmaceutical industry, therefore, must necessarily include measures that protect against the infringement of intellectual property rights as well (Long 2000).

Protecting Intellectual Property Rights

Protecting a company's intellectual property rights is often more complicated than protecting its tangible property rights, but in the pharmaceutical industry it is also far more necessary. It is through the exclusive right to intellectual property -- specifically, to the formulas and methods of manufacture of many pharmaceutical products -- that profit incentives for future and continuing development are created (Kaufman 2008). In order to protect these rights, certain concessions have actually been made that allow for certain limited and now legal infringements -- when developing countries cannot afford to provide a certain medication to a population in need, specifically -- so as to head off black-market companies from producing and distributing copied pharmaceutical products (GTN 2004).

Other measures that managers of pharmaceutical companies must take in order to protect the infringement of their intellectual property rights include strict on-site security, ensuring the neither products nor plans leave the facility unless warranted by certain circumstances and with secure personnel. New communication technologies require stricter scrutiny, as well. The threat of reprisal is the most effective measure against intellectual property right infringements, and for this reason one of the most essential actions that can be taken in this regard -- and frequently is -- is the filing of civil and criminal charges against companies that infringe upon these rights in an aggressive and uncompromising manner (Long 2000). This not only limits damages, but dissuades future infringement.

Protecting Other Firms

Refraining from infringing on another company's tangible and intellectual property rights might be seem to be a simple task, but it does require that certain actions are taken by pharmaceutical company managers. First and foremost, knowledge of the property right laws in effect must be obtained and thoroughly understood in order to refrain from infringing upon them. With this knowledge in place, managers can ensure that any similarities that develop between their own products and/or processes will not be legally infringing upon another company's rights. In order for this to be fully effective, however, companies must ironically have some knowledge of current patents and property rights obtained by other companies in the industry, especially those developing similar products.