For academic medical centers, hospital systems, and life sciences companies, turning clinical research into a protected product takes years and significant capital.
Enforcing the resulting patents adds cost, sovereign immunity concerns, and public interest questions that look different in a medical setting.
In the Bloomberg Law article Hospitals Find Biotech Makes a Critical Partner in IP Litigation, the publication explored why hospitals rarely enforce patents alone and how biotech partners change that calculation. Hemant Gupta, Member of the Firm of Epstein Becker Green and counsel to hospital systems, health care technology companies, and life sciences organizations on intellectual property, technology transactions, and licensing, discussed the partnership model.
Hemant explained that moving research from the hospital to the market, and defending the IP behind it, is difficult without a biotech partner's resources. Biotech companies are generally better positioned to fund litigation and to show they have been harmed by infringers. That matters at the U.S. International Trade Commission, which cannot award damages but can block infringing imports. A biotech company can point to a U.S.-developed product hurt by those imports, while a hospital may not yet have anything on the market.
These partnerships carry their own risks. Hemant said they can be both beneficial and complex, and that agreements should anticipate problems such as reputational harm to the hospital if the product faces infringement claims. He stressed that parties should resolve those questions at the outset.
"All of those become very important questions that have to be addressed on the front end," Gupta said. "Because we often also see disputes between the hospital and the biotech company when license agreements go wrong."
Get in Touch
To discuss how hospital and biotech licensing structures may affect your institution's patent enforcement strategy and commercialization agreements, contact Hemant Gupta at hgupta@ebglaw.com.
