Pharmaceutical
Pharmaceutical
Developing a medication costs billions of dollars and requires a huge investment in research and development. The return on effective innovations are huge—thus helping to gain a competitive edge in the market. As the stakes involved in the pharma industry are high, companies are spending a significantly higher portion of revenues on not only innovations, but developing an innovation strategy for the development and marketing of new drugs. Innovation is synonymous with drug discovery and approval.
According to industry estimates, the large pharma companies are now spending USD $5 billion for approved molecules. Smaller companies, on the other hand, tend to spend less. The cost incurred for research and development is enormous: with an average cost of USD $1.3 billion for a new drug. The average time spent is 12-15 years from research to market of drug (with clinical trials consuming anywhere from 6-8 years).
These innovations lead to discovery of new life-saving drugs and have to be protected through intellectual property rights (IPRs). Patents provide pharma companies exclusive rights to market drugs and prevent others to manufacture, sell, and make these drugs for a period of 20 years. IPR is a prerequisite for pharma companies for identification, planning, commercialization, and protection of invention. It is also an important tool to protect investment, time, and effort and encourages healthy competition—thus promoting industrial development and economic growth. IPRs also provide incentives to pharma companies to invest in research and development.
The IPR protection works in numerous ways:
- Provides fair and effective incentive for innovation
- Protects pharma companies against potential infringers
- Provides strong enforcement tools for defending infringed patents
In a weak IPR protection economy, generic drug manufacturers imitate biopharmaceutical innovations without investing time and money to develop new medicines. As a result, branded drug manufacturers are unable to recoup investments in new drug development, thus finding it difficult to invest in research and development (R&D) of new drugs and costly diseases.
A stronger IPR regime is aids pharma companies in protecting innovation from the research to development stage. Creating, managing, and protecting intellectual property are becoming an important source of raising funds required for investment in R&D. IPRs also play a crucial role in mergers and acquisitions of the target SME and are independent commodities that can be traded by way of licensing, joint ventures, etc.
IPR has a significant impact in the pharma industry from issues ranging from discovering, developing to pricing, distribution, competition mapping, availability, and pricing of new medicines. With stronger IPR protection in developed countries, the pharma companies are growing at a rapid rate. On the flip side, developing countries criticize patent system as it creates monopoly in the market and leads to higher prices of drugs.
iVakil IP Help Client In Pharmaceutical Business With
- Generating niche IP idea along with strong IP protection for multi-million dollar products
- Filing and getting strong IP on behalf of clients
- Analysing patent roadmap of product and accordingly providing IP guidance to client for early entry into market considering “Pros” and “Cons”.
- IP strategic advice to client for “Dos” and “Don’ts” in IP area.