Patent portfolios and pharmaceuticals: A European perspective

This book describes undertakings’ tendency today to protect their intangible technical property through a portfolio of patents. Such trend is in part triggered by the very same feature of modern innovation which, being today complex and cumulative, demands for more patents to efficiently protect its inventive trail. At the same time, undertakings have come to realize that the patent portfolio vests its owner with a set of strategic advantages which exceed by far the mere excluding powers conferred by the patents contained therein. The latter circumstance igniting a vicious circle, whereby firms patent more and more. While fully compliant with patent law, portfolios may cause dangerous drawbacks for competing innovators, as the cluster builds up entry barriers sometimes very hard to surpass. This all the more so in the pharmaceutical sector where the portfolios can be successfully implemented against both originators and generic companies, hence threatening the entrance of generic drugs and biosimilars. The book provides for an in-depth analysis of patent law substantive -- as well as procedural -- provisions allowing to build patent portfolios in the pharmaceutical sector. It then moves to analyze cases where patent portfolios have been implemented to the goal of foreclosing access to competitors, and the different outcomes provided with by patent law and by competition law.