Trade Secrets in Life Science and Pharmaceutical Companies

Protecting Trade Secrets in Canada.

Patents in the life sciences industries are a key form of intellectual property (IP), particularly for products such as brand-name drugs and medical devices. However, trade secrets can also be a useful tool for many types of innovations. In appropriate cases, trade secrets can offer long-term protection of IP for a lower financial cost than patenting. This type of protection must be approached ...

Secrets of the Trade

President Obama has discovered first-hand how difficult wrangling the interests of a dozen nations can be. For six years, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been in negotiations and might prove to be Obama’s crowning foreign policy achievement. If the 12-nation Free Trade Agreement (FTA) passes, it will shape the future of economic development in the Asia-Pacific and cement the U.S. as the...

Expired Patients, Trade Secrets, and Stymied Competition

Trade Secrets: Tools for Innovation and Collaboration

Virtual pharmaceutical companies: collaborating flexibly in pharmaceutical development.

Research and development (R&D) collaborations represent one approach chosen by the pharmaceutical industry to tackle current challenges posed by declining internal R&D success rates and fading of the blockbuster model. In recent years, a flexible concept to collaborate in R&D has emerged: virtual pharmaceutical companies (VPCs). These differ from other R&D companies, such as biotech start-ups, ...