Welcome back to intellectual property in healthcare. This is part three, the IP law of healthcare. In parts one and two we talked about an overview of intellectual property law more generally. Now in this part we're going to move on from there and talk specifically about how Healthcare and IP work together. And whether or not intellectual property law works well in the healthcare context. And so we basically have three parts that I want to go over in this section today. Which is healthcare and IP, sort of an overview. And then talk about pharmaceutical patent law. Because that's one of the areas in which the intellectual property aspects of healthcare are particularly pronounced. And particularly important to the way that the healthcare system works. And then finally I want to talk about a few applications of general intellectual property law concepts into the healthcare context. To show how they change, how they work and how healthcare works interacts with intellectual property law. So let's dive in and talk about healthcare and intellectual property. So healthcare is about 18 percent of the US economy. One of the largest industries in the entire economy. So, as you might expect, there's an enormous amount of intellectual property that comes to bear on healthcare. So first there's a ton of private research and development. Billions and billions of dollars a year. Private research and development is done in the healthcare industry. This involves pharmaceuticals, methods of treatment, medical devices. All of these things use intellectual property laws. In particular patents, but also trade secrets sometimes. In order to incentivize their creation, protect their development. And allow companies who are innovating in these areas to do so. With some assurance that they're going to get a return on their investment. In healthcare we also o have a large amount of public research and development. Meaning the government, usually the Federal Government, but also sometimes state governments is investing heavily in scientific research. A lot of times this is in basic science research, which raises a number of interesting questions about patent law. In terms of whether you can patent basic scientific principles. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But it's also increasingly becoming the case that government is particularly interested in investing in what we call applied or translational science. As it's scientific research that is, it's basic in nature, but it is directed towards a real commercializable or real end goal. And that, of course, bears much more on the intellectual property concepts. And then another emerging trend in healthcare is a public-private partnerships. Where the government for example may provide significant research dollars. And then the private companies provide things like labs or expertise or maybe mix their own money. And that raises a number of really interesting intellectual property law issues about who owns it. How do you work with the IP? Does the private company manage the IP on behalf of the government or vice versa? Another area, obviously, in healthcare is manufacturing. Lots and lots of manufacturing is done in healthcare, both for pharmaceutical drugs, as well as devices and so forth. And that's going to be the sort of the more traditional patents and trade secret ways of protecting. So methods and devices, if you have a method of creating a pharmaceutical drug, you may be able to have a trade secret that would protect that. You might also try and have patents on either the actual devices that you use to manufacture with or some of the methods and techniques. Care delivery is obviously an important component of the healthcare industry. And here you are looking at things like innovations and new methods of care. Some organizational development, some business methods, some finance methods. All of these things, patents and some copyright are going to bear on. And we do see some use of intellectual property law in the care delivery context as well. And then finally in marketing and communications. We see advertising, lots and lots of advertising in health care. Product packaging is really important because many of these products and devices are direct to consumer. Or at least given to doctors who are going to be susceptible or need the marketing communications. And that we're going to be seeing the use of trademarks and copyright to protect those. So healthcare is obviously enormously interrelated to intellectual property law. And so knowing intellectual property is going to be really important to understanding how healthcare works in the context of the US economy.
