Patents are important tools to protect innovations in the food industry. They are also indicators of the research and development of an institution. Universities play a significant role in generating and developing innovative technologies. Center for Support to Technological Development (CDT is the Technological innovation center (NIT) that is responsible for protecting the technologies developed by the academic community of the University of Brasilia (UnB). This case study analyzes the patents and patent applications related to food deposited by the UnB. For this purpose, a search was conducted on the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) institutional page through the patent database. The results show diverse applications to the food area that are mainly related to biotechnology. Half of the protections are still in progress in the INPI workflow. The requirements issued were primarily related to national genetic heritage. Archiving processes were identified due to non-payment, but we highlighted that it could be a strategic decision of NIT/CDT. Rejections were mainly related to the lack of novelty or inventive steps. Currently, two food-related patents are in force that took, on average, nine and a half years to be granted. Although UnB exclusively owns the majority, the results also evidence co-ownership with other universities and companies. Finally, this study highlights possible partnerships between UnB and the food industry through technology transfer. The technology transfer indicators pointed out that UnB has expertise in this area and that there is a potential to be explored. These results contribute to strategic decision-making in developing new technologies related to food and nutrition and their transfer to society. The scale-up and the increased degree of maturity require greater interaction with the productive sector to ensure the transfer of technology for innovation arising from the research conducted at UnB.

Guidance on the conduct of health technology assessments rarely recommends accounting for anticipated future price declines that can follow loss of marketing exclusivity. This article explores when it is appropriate to account for generic pricing and whether it can influence cost-effectiveness estimates.
This article presents 4 case studies. Case study 1 considers a hypothetical drug used by a first patient cohort at branded prices and by subsequent, \"downstream\" cohorts at generic prices. Case study 2 explores whether statin assessments should account for generic prices for downstream cohorts that gain access after the initial cohort. Case study 3 uses a simplified spreadsheet model to assess the impact of accounting for generic pricing for inclisiran, used when statins insufficiently reduce cholesterol. Case study 4 amends this model for a hypothetical, advanced, follow-on treatment displacing inclisiran.
Assessments should include generic pricing even if the first cohort using a drug pays branded prices and only downstream cohorts pay generic prices (case study 1). Because eventual generic pricing for statins did not depend on decisions for downstream cohorts, assessing reimbursement for those cohorts could safely omit generic pricing (case study 2). For inclisiran (case study 3), including generic pricing notably improved estimated cost-effectiveness. Displacing inclisiran with an advanced therapy (case study 4) modestly affected estimated cost-effectiveness.
Although this analysis relies on simplified and hypothetical models, it demonstrates that accounting for generic pricing might substantially reduce estimated cost-effectiveness ratios. Doing so when warranted is crucial to improving health technology assessment validity.

This study attempts to analyze patents as cited/mentioned documents to better understand the interest, dissemination and engagement of these documents in social environments, laying the foundations for social media studies of patents (social Patentometrics).Particularly, this study aims to determine how patents are disseminated on Twitter by analyzing three elements: tweets linking to patents, users linking to patents, and patents linked from Twitter. To do this, all the tweets containing at least one link to a full-text patent available on Google Patents were collected and analyzed, yielding a total of 126,815 tweets (and 129,001 links) to 86,417 patents. The results evidence an increase of the number of linking tweets over the years, presumably due to the creation of a standardized patent URL ID and the integration of Google Patents and Google Scholar, which took place in 2015. The engagement achieved by these tweets is limited (80.2% of tweets did not attract likes) but increasing notably since 2018. Two super-publisher twitter bot accounts (dailypatent and uspatentbot) are responsible of 53.3% of all the linking tweets, while most accounts are sporadic users linking to patent as part of a conversation. The patents most tweeted are, by far, from United States (87.5% of all links to Google Patents), mainly due to the effect of the two super-publishers. The impact of patents in terms of the number of tweets linking to them is unrelated to their year of publication, status or number of patent citations received, while controversial and media topics might be more determinant factors. However, further research is needed to better understand the topics discussed around patents on Twitter, the users involved, and the metrics attained. Given the increasing number of linking users and linked patents, this study finds Twitter as a relevant source to measure patent-level metrics, shedding light on the impact and interest of patents by the broad public.

Microneedles have the clinical advantage of being able to deliver complex drugs across the skin in a convenient and comfortable manner yet haven\'t successfully transitioned to medical practice. Diabetes mellitus is a complicated disease, which is commonly treated with multiple daily insulin injections, contributing to poor treatment adherence. Firstly, this review determines the clinical prospect of microneedles, alongside considerations that ought to be addressed before microneedle technology can be translated from bench to bedside. Thereafter, we use diabetes as a case study to consider how microneedle-based-technology may be successfully harnessed. Here, publications referring to insulin microneedles were evaluated to understand whether insertion efficiency, angle of insertion, successful dose delivery, dose adjustability, material biocompatibility and therapeutic stability are being addressed in early stage research. Moreover, over 3,000 patents from 1970-2019 were reviewed with the search term \'\"microneedle\" AND \"insulin\"\' to understand the current status of the field. In conclusion, the reporting of early stage microneedle research demonstrated a lack of consistency relating to the translational factors addressed. Additionally, a more rational design, based on a patient-centred approach is required before microneedle-based delivery systems can be used to revolutionise the lives of people living with diabetes following regulatory approval.

This article posits that Australia, as an affluent country with increasing capacity to manufacture vaccines, has an obligation to assist its regional (and global) counterparts in implementing vaccination programs that protect their populations. First, the article explores the capacity of high-income nations to meet their obligations, assist their neighbours and refrain from vaccine nationalism. This inquiry involves an analysis of the optimal ethical strategy for distributing vaccines globally, and the role that Australia might play in this distribution strategy. Secondly, the article examines the intellectual property landscape for vaccines in Australia, focusing on the patents that cover vaccine compositions and manufacturing techniques (recognizing the potential for know-how and access to materials as well as patents to affect manufacturing capacity). This article then discusses the strategies the Australian Government has at its disposal to counter potential intellectual property impediments whilst complying with existing obligations under the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), as an ethically appropriate response to the pandemic. This article also considers whether a so-called TRIPS waiver could provide better options and concludes that the challenge of compelling disclosure of know-how remains.

How might one identify, via publicly accessible websites, research-active specialists at an academic medical center? As a case study, health-informatics specialists were identified at two academic medical centers: University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, and University of Maryland-Baltimore. Four types of data about researchers were sought: frequency of publication, frequency of citations, money from grants, and patents. Based on frequency of published articles, one center favored bioinformatics and cardiology, whereas the other produced more results in nursing and radiology. Interestingly, different patterns were found across different data sets. This bibliometric method contrasted with the method of searching for active researchers via a web portal showing board-certified specialists at a particular institution. This alternative approach was tried for informatics and sleep medicine, and the bibliometric method seemed to produce better recall and precision.

Protecting intellectual property rights are important and particularly pertinent for inventions that are an outcome of rigorous research and development. While the grant of patents is subject to establishing novelty and inventive step, it further indicates the technological development and is helpful for researchers working in the same technical domain. The aim of the present research work is to map the existing work through an analysis of patent literature in the field of Coronaviruses (CoV), particularly COVID-19 (2019-nCoV). CoV is a large family of viruses known to cause illness in humans and animals, particularly known for causing respiratory infections, as evidenced in earlier times, such as in MERS i.e., Middle East Respiratory Syndrome; and SRS i.e., Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. A recently identified novel-coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has caused pandemic situations across the globe.
To expand the analysis of patents related to CoV and 2019-nCoV, an evaluation has been conducted by patenting trends of particular strains of identified CoV diseases by present legal status, main concerned countries via the earliest priority years and its assignee types and inventors of identified relevant patents. The global patent documents were analyzed to check the scope of claims along with focuses and trends of the published patent documents for the entire CoV family, including 2019-nCoV through the present landscape.
To extract the results, the Derwent Innovation database was used by a combination of different keystrings. Approximately 3800 patents were obtained and further scrutinized and analyzed. The present write-up also discusses the recent progress of patent applications in a period of the year 2010 to 2020 (present) along with the recent developments in India for the treatment options for CoV and 2019-nCoV.
Present analysis showed that key areas of the inventions were the vaccines and diagnostic kits apart from the composition for the treatment of CoV. It was also observed that no specific vaccine treatments are available for the treatment of 2019-nCov; however, developing novel chemical or biological drugs and kits for early diagnosis, prevention, and disease management is the primary governing topic among the patented inventions. The present study also indicates potential research opportunities for the future, particularly to combat 2019-nCoV.
The present paper analyzes the existing patents in the field of Coronaviruses and 2019-nCoV and suggests a way forward for the effective contribution in this upcoming research area. From the trend analysis, an increase in the filing of the overall trend of patent families was observed for a period of 2010 to the current year. This multifaceted analysis of identified patent literature provides an understanding of the focuses on present ongoing research and a grey area in terms of the trends of technological innovations in disease management in patients with CoV and 2019-nCoV. Furthermore, the findings and outcome of the present study offer insights for the proposed research and innovation opportunities and provide actionable information in order to facilitate policymakers, academia, research-driven institutes and also investors to make better decisions regarding programmed steps for research and development for the diagnosis, treatment and taking preventive measures for CoV and 2019-nCoV. The present article also emphasizes the need for future development and the role of academia and collaboration with industry for speedy research with a rationale.

Investments in research and development (R&D) and innovation are expensive, and one wishes to be assured that there is positive feedback and to receive guidance on how to direct investments in the future. The social or economic benefits of investments in R&D are of particular interest to policymakers. In this regard, public expense in research, especially through universities, is sometimes being questioned. This paper establishes a measure of how research in Spain, and specifically in its universities, is involved. In this study, we have analyzed all the literature cited in the period 1998-2018 produced by Spanish institutions and which has been cited in at least one international patent, obtaining more than 40,000 publications from more than 160,000 different authors. The data have been surprisingly positive, showing that practically all public universities contribute to this subject and that there is a great deal of international collaboration, both in terms of the number of countries with which they collaborate and the prestige of the institutions involved. Regarding the specific scientific fields in which this collaboration is most relevant, biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, and medicine together account for almost 40% of the total works. The topics most used by these publications were those of diseases or medical problems such as: Neoplams, Carcinoma, Alzheimer Disease, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1). Oncology was according to the All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) the leading and central issue. Therefore, although the result of basic research is difficult to quantify, when it is observed that there is a return in fields such as medicine or global health, it can be said that it is well employed. In terms of journals from a purely bibliometric point of view, it has been observed that some journals do not have a great impact or relative position within their categories, but they do have a great relevance in this area of patent support. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to set up a rank for scientific journals based on the citations of patents, so the percentage of articles cited in patents with Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) >1, and as an indicator of scientific transfer from universities or research centres, the transference index in patents (TIP) is also proposed.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether ostomy industry patent activity (PA) is associated with patient outcomes and healthcare costs.
METHODS: Two groups of ostomy pouch users based on manufacturer PA (low or high) were compared in terms of ostomy-related wear patterns, adverse events, and healthcare expenditure. Using Swedish registry data, all patients with newly formed stomas were divided between each group and were followed during a 2-year period (2011-12). Propensity score matching and parametric duration analysis were used to compare outcomes between patients of similar characteristics such as sex, age, and ostomy surgery type.
RESULTS: In both one- and two-piece systems, the high PA group had significantly lower monthly ostomy-related expenditure than the low PA group (one-piece: 197.47 EUR versus 233.34 EUR; two-piece: 164.00 EUR versus 278.98 EUR). Fewer pouch and skin wafer purchases per month were an important driver of cost differences. Both groups had similar likelihood of purchasing dermatological products for skin complications over time.
CONCLUSIONS: PA in the ostomy care industry was associated with reduced healthcare costs, but not necessarily with fewer skin complications. It suggests that there is a health economic benefit from products made by patent intensive companies which may differentiate them from generic comparators, but more research is needed to understand the impact of activities conducive to medical innovation on health outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Probiotics are the live microbes that exert beneficial effects on the health of the host cell, creating novel nanoformulations via probiotic bacteria, thus gaining tremendous momentum recently. The probiotic bacteria are being employed in synthesizing or more specifically biosynthesizing several nanoparticles like metallic as well as non-metallic nanoparticles. Biosynthesis of metallic nanoparticles is currently the focus of research nowadays due to several applications. Research inputs have led to the exploration of probiotic bacteria in biosynthesizing novel metallic nanoparticles.
OBJECTIVE: The present review explores various research and patent reports on metallic nanoparticles biosynthesized using probiotic bacteria.
METHODS: Through the sites, www.freepatentsonline.com and www.uspto.gov/patft, patents have been retrieved including US patents, EP and WIPO patents.
RESULTS: Various reports and patents have revealed that probiotic bacteria can effectively produce metallic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have found applications in cosmetics, pharmaceutics, medicine and biotechnology. Areas of future research can include the exploration of formulation aspects of metallic nanoparticles of iron, zinc, tellurium and synthesis of these particles using yeast, fungi, plant extracts and several biomaterials.
CONCLUSIONS: Use of probiotic bacteria in synthesizing metallic nanoparticles is an effective biosynthetic approach. However, the technique needs wider exploration for newer metallic/nonmetallic/metalloid NPs for therapeutic applications.