PATENTING AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Commercialisation

Examples of products developed from MRC inventions include drugs such as Avastin ®, Herceptin ®, Humira ®, Synagis ® and Tysabri ® (to treat diseases as wide-ranging as cancer, infectious and inflammatory diseases) as well as technologies such as MRI scanning and confocal microscopy. These inventions help bring welcome relief to many, but they also generate income for the biotechnology and pharma companies that licence them, the MRC and the inventors themselves (through the Awards to Inventors scheme). In order to generate these revenues, MRC Technology protects the IP contained in the invention. This ensures that any income generated from a technology comes back to the rightful recipients.

Protecting your work

As an MRC funded scientist your discoveries must be disclosed to us first. Before publishing your work through any medium, including in a journal, via internet, presentation, abstract, workshop etc., we must first secure the IP to protect both your and MRC’s rights, if it is deemed necessary. This process rarely results in any delay to your publication, but obviously it helps if you talk to us early! Stringent background research helps us ascertain the commercial value of IP and the need for patent protection. Not every invention can be, or should be, patented.

Developing your work

Sometimes your invention has potential but is not deemed commercially ready or is at too early a stage for a company to develop. To this end we can help take your discoveries further through our Development Gap Fund or utilise your discoveries through our Therapeutic Antibody Group, our Drug Discovery Group and even through our reagents catalogue. We can then make your invention more attractive to companies by removing early stage risk

For example, one option might be to create antibodies based on your research through the Therapeutic Antibody Group (TAG). These antibodies can then be used in your research to validate and characterise an antigen that could ultimately lead to a therapeutic antibody that could help cure disease.

Some of the biggest UK biotech companies have also been created through technology flowing out of MRC including UCB-Celltech, Cambridge Antibody Technology, Ardana and Domantis. We have been instrumental in setting these companies up and the MRC scientists whose work they were based on have enjoyed great success.