In the last four years, several companies with antiviral drug programs, including Alios BioPharma, Idenix, Inhibitex, InterMune and Pharmasset, have been acquired by large pharmaceutical companies (‘‘big pharma’’). One of the main reasons these companies are attractive to big pharma is that they have developed a drug that shows promise against a disease where there is not yet a suitable cure. Another important aspect to big pharma is the company’s patent portfolio. Some interesting statistics regarding drug development are: (1) a drug takes an average of 10-15 years to develop and costs billions of dollars; (2) only one out of 5,000-10,000 new chemical entities ever reaches the consumers; (3) only two out of 10 drugs that undergo clinical trials reach the market; and (4) of those drugs that reach the market, only three out of 10 drugs earn enough money to match or exceed the associated research and development costs. Therefore, to be attractive to big pharma seeking to protect such enormous investments it is important for a company that its drug be protected by a strong patent portfolio.

Landscape Searching Is a Useful Tool -

At the beginning, an important step in creating a strong patent portfolio is landscape searching. This includes both patentability and clearance searching. Often a company conducts its own in-house searching using available programs and/or search engines, such as SciFinder. This initial searching is useful to identify potential competitors and some initial references. However, a company should consider spending the money and commissioning one or more searches by an outside search company. Searching is a process that includes many variables, and an outside search company has experience in identifying and considering these variables...

Originally published in Bloomberg BNA's Life Sciences Law & Industry Report, 09 LSLR 344, 03/20/2015.