A new research report from Landon IP, the patent analytics and consulting arm of intellectual property management specialist CPA Global, and intellectual property firm Marks & Clerk shows that the United States (US) leads the world in the number of patent first filings for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics tests. Such tests are a vital tool to help combat the global health threat of increasing antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance.
The report includes a comprehensive patent landscape study that was undertaken in support of the Longitude Prize, a £10 million prize fund aiming to revolutionize global healthcare and conserve antibiotics for future generations. It is run by UK innovation foundation, Nesta, with government-backed funding partner Innovate UK. The Prize seeks to find a fast, accurate, easy-to-use and cost-effective test for microbial infections that will allow health professionals worldwide to administer the right antibiotics at the right time. The report, Microbial infection: Point-of-care diagnostics, examines patent filing behaviour relating to antimicrobial POC diagnostics tests from 2009-2014.
According to the study, the US dominates patent filing in the POC diagnostics field. Out of 332 patent families filed from 2009-2014, 258 of them were first filed in the US. UK was second with 26 first filings and Germany, Australia, Singapore and South Korea were the next most common jurisdictions for patent first filings with six each. US life sciences company Abbott was the world's most prolific first filer of POC diagnostics patents (26 patent families) during this timeframe, followed by the University of California (more than five patent families). Further, the study notes that over half of patent filings relating to POC diagnostics around the world were by private companies (170 out of 332 families between 2009 and 2014). Particularly dedicated to the cause are small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which represent 70 percent of patent filings by private companies (121 patent families out of 170). However, universities are also hotbeds of innovation, accounting for 118 families. Of the patent applications that specified which kind of antigen the device and/or assay (diagnostics method) sought to detect, 134 were targeted at bacteria and 114 were targeted at viruses. Only seven were targeted at parasites and five at fungi. The most commonly targeted individual antigens were mycobacteria (a cause of tuberculosis – 28 applications), HIV (nine applications), MRSA (eight applications) and C. difficile (nine applications).
Over half of patent families filed related to assays (170 out of 332), while less than a fifth related to diagnostics devices themselves (55 out of 332). The remainder of applications related to both an assay and device.
The full report Microbial infection: Point-of-care diagnostics is available at: www.cpaglobal.com/assets/Documents/REPORTPOCDiagnosticsReportDRAFT13FINAL.PDF?1435596386 or www.marks-clerk.com/MarksClerk/media/MCMediaLib/PDF's/Reports/Microbial-infection-Point-of-Care-diagnostics-Report-2015.pdf.
