IP Theft on a Global Scale: Protecting America’s Biotech Innovations

Biotech executives and investors should be sounding the alarm bell to stop the globalization of America’s Intellectual Property in the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical industry sectors. So should every patient with an unmet disease or disorder therapy. Globalization of intellectual property caused by “IP waiver” actions will have a chilling effect (if not an outright freeze!) on early-stage investments in companies working on novel biotherapies and related discoveries. No money means no new therapies or medicines. Hope will be smothered, people will be harmed, an industry will be gutted, and America’s economic and national security will take yet another blow.

Expanding the World Trade Organization (WTO) waiver of COVID intellectual property rights would hurt innovation—and the threat alone already impacts biotechs’ decisions, BIO Board Member Eddie J. Sullivan, President of SAb Biotherapeutics, told the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee yesterday.

A waiver of IP rights for COVID diagnostics and therapeutics will be considered at the Feb. 26-29 WTO Ministerial. However, if the IP waiver action moves forward, America’s biotechnology industry could be devasted, as the incentives to discover therapies and treatments for unmet disease and disorder needs would be extinguished.

IP protection begins at the idea stage, so biotechnology companies and their investment partners must implement innovation protection strategies to protect those IP assets from misuse, loss, theft, and misappropriation at the early stage and throughout the entire innovation lifecycle.

Watch the summary of the testimony by clicking on the link below and contact IPTalons to learn how to protect your research pipelines and resulting IP assets.