Protect It Before You Promote It: IP Advice for MedTech Innovators

Developed a new medical product? Check.

Got tickets to an exciting MedTech conference to show off your new product? Check.

Intellectual property? Pardon?

In the excitement of bringing a new MedTech product to market it can be easy to overlook or leave intellectual property issues until later. Don’t!

Intellectual property issues are best sorted out upfront and before any greater potential issues arise.

In developing your product, you may want, or need, to give it to focus groups and users to try and test so they can benefit from your product before it goes to market. You’ll need to be able to discuss your product with them and receive their feedback. They will need to be able to use and experience the product to evaluate it. You want to do this in an open and collaborative environment, but without jeopardising your intellectual property rights. This is much easier if it is understood, by everyone involved, what is confidential. Nobody wants to be looking over their shoulder wondering if a previous collaboration or focus group discussion will negatively impact a patent application.  You may worry that conversations about intellectual property ownership are tricky or potentially off putting to those you wish to work with, but issues that feel large at the outset are likely to evaporate on discussion – so be bold and have open, upfront, discussions about confidentiality and ownership so you know what is yours to protect.

The same goes for collaborators. If you identify who owns which aspects of the intellectual property at the start of the relationship and throughout the development process, it will be much easier to address any ownership matters, than having to rake it over and remember who came up with which element. Who wants to have an acrimonious conversation about the legal stuff afterwards, when you really want to get your new medical product out there and helping those who need it? No one.

Furthermore, improperly laying out relationships can result in poor outcomes when trying to protect the product. Can you prove you owns the intellectual property? Is an assignment in place transferring intellectual property to your company? Without a clear legal chain of ownership in place, any patent or design applications may be vulnerable to attack. It may be difficult to show you own an invention and are entitled to file patents for it. Despite how beneficial your new product is to patients, an unproven or unclear chain of ownership may cause your IP protection to fall down on a technicality.

If you are unsure what should be kept secret, what should be protected, or what you can more freely discuss during your product developments and marketing, HGF can help. We are experts in identifying any intellectual property you have, and devising and implementing protection strategies to help you avoid IP pitfalls.

Don’t let intellectual property issues get in the way of marketing and delivering your new medical product to those who need it. Be bold, have conversations up front and ensure you’ve laid the groundwork to make sure you’re protected. Then go and enjoy that conference.

This article was written by Patent Director Frazer Bye.