Medical Devices, Pharmaceutical

2020.08.12 Leo Tsou

COVID-19 is a worldwide pandemic. To solve this crisis, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and biotech companies—such as AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech, Novavax and J&J—are currently working on finding cures. The world’s urgent need for a vaccine has never been seen before. However, many vaccine developing companies might not notice that they are walking straight into a future patent war. This article explains why there will be a patent war in the near future and provides advice for those vaccine developing companies that are participating in or are going to participate in the race for vaccine development. The Race for COVID-19 Vaccine...

2020.07.17 Yolanda Huang

Are M&A in Semiconductors Trending Again? Verifying M&A Business Strategies via Patent Data On July 13, 2020, Semiconductor chipmaker Analog Devices Inc (ADI) announced it would buy rival company Maxim Integrated Products (MXIM), making it the largest M&A deal in the chipmaking sector this year. Reported by Reuters, the transaction to acquire MXIM will cost ADI about 21 billion, the deal is expected to boost ADI’s market share in self-driving and 5G chips. Interviewed by Reuters, ADI’s Chief Executive Officer, Vincent Roche opined that combining the engineering teams of both companies is expected to enable the design and production of ICs...

2020.06.12 Leo Tsou

How Does One Avoid Being Deceived by Medical Academic Scandals? WISPRO Manager Leo Tsou: Scientific Findings in the Medical Field Need Time to Accumulate, Track Records Are Not Easy to Fake. Earlier this month, two of the world’s leading medical journals—The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine—retracted articles related to Covid-19 studies based on data provided by the small US company, Surgisphere. Those journals retracted their articles because the data provided by Surgisphere was found to contain artificial traces, and Surgisphere refused to provide raw data to the co-authors and peer review auditors. The article published by The...

2020.06.09 Daniel Kuo

New Video Coding Standard Released. WISPRO Analyst Daniel Kuo: Be Aware of the Licensing Conditions When Selecting From Multiple Standards According to Display Daily, the Essential Video Coding (EVC) standard led by Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung was officially released in April 2020. Additionally, the development of Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standards will also be completed in due course. The next generation of video coding technology is a competitive situation. The supporters, the business models, and the licensing strategies of all parties will influence whether the standard will succeed in the future. Besides VVC, EVC, and AV1—led by Google and other entities—the previous technical standards, including High-efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Advanced Video Coding (AVC),...

2020.06.02 Leo Tsou

Scientists Find a Potential Treatment for COVID-19 From a SARS Survivor – Is Antibody Isolated From a Patient Patentable? Manager Leo Tsou: The Subject Matter of the Claim Is the Key. Recently, scientists reported that a monoclonal antibody code-named S309, which was first discovered from the blood sample of a SARS survivor in 2003, showed its extraordinary capability of neutralizing the COVID-19 virus in a lab. The antibody has the potential to be developed as a COVID-19 treatment, and will be applied in clinical trials in the near future. However, based on the decision of the Myriad Case by the US Supreme Court...

2019.07.17 Alex Chou

The value and growth of the global medical imaging industry have attracted global investors and technical teams into artificial intelligence solutions for medical imaging. According to the Global Medical Imaging Trends research report released by ITN Online in 2017, the total number of global medical images will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1% from year 2016 to 2021. In addition, Market Research Engine’s market research report also pointed out the estimated production value of medical imaging will grow from $2.2 billion in 2015 to more than $3 billion in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.0%....

2019.03.20 Leo Tsou

March 2019 – Patent deployment in pharmaceutical industry is very different from patent deployment in other industries. This is caused by the characteristics of pharmaceuticals.  First, the lengthy research period prior to market launch. The long R&D period, usually takes over 10 years, makes the timing of patent filing tricky. When launching a product, patents filed in early research stage could be expired or remain only a short effective term. Second, extremely low success rate of the R&D in pharmaceutical products. Most R&D projects fail due to safety or efficacy issue. In average, only one out of a thousand potential compounds could be...

2019.03.20 Y.P. Jou

November 2017  – As biomedical research and development thrives in Taiwan, the government of Taiwan has not only enlisted biopharmaceutical industry in one of the five innovative industries policies, but also set to position Taiwan as “Asia-Pacific Hub for Biomedical R&D”. For an innovative and technology-intensive industry such as the biomedical industry, cross-border IP deployment and operation are indispensable roles for ensuring and improving revenue. Biomedicines for treating or alleviating human diseases can be classified into three categories: 1. small-molecule drugs composed of chemically-synthesized compounds; 2. large molecule drugs composed of proteins, peptides or nucleic acids; 3. botanical drug extracted from...