Vaccines - patenting dynamics of a powerful healthcare tool

Abstract

Vaccines are considered to be some of the most powerful healthcare tools of this century. From an industrial perspective, in the past they have not provided particularly attractive targets for investment, but this situation changed dramatically in the late eighties and early nineties with governmental initiatives aimed at stabilising the vaccine liability situation together with advances in molecular biology and the emergence of biotechnology, opening-up new opportunities for solving the scientific problems associated with vaccine developments. This paper analyses how these developments are reflected in patenting activities worldwide. The comparison of vaccine patent applications with pharmaceutical patents as a whole indicates that vaccine research has been a very dynamic field during the last 15 years; total patent applications increased by a factor of 7.5 between 1980 and 1994. Genetic engineering approaches have established themselves as key tools for vaccine R&D, such techniques being applied in more than 50% of all vaccine patent applications during the nineties. International vaccine patent applications are mainly driven by the US and Europe, which together contributed 91% of all patents and 96% of the genetic engineering related vaccine patents in 1994. Within Europe, France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy are the most active countries. Key players in vaccine patenting are American governmental agencies, international pharmaceutical corporations, biotech firms, universities and non-university public research organisations. All-in-all, public research activities seem to play a crucial role in the creation of scientific and technological knowledge for the development of new vaccines.

• biotech firms
• genetic engineering
• governmental agencies
• patenting dynamics
• patents
• research organisations
• vaccines