Our team experts Montserrat Jané and Monica Lopez held on-line classes and fielded questions related to patents in their respective specialist fields of chemistry and pharmacy and biotechnology and biomedicine as part of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office SPTO and the Patent Centre of University of Barcelona on-line patent course from 26th to 29th October. The two modules dealt with specific questions of patents in these sectors, especially in the E.U. and the U.S.A.

The Chemistry and Pharmacy module was imparted by Montserrat Jané, who having over 12 years of experience in R&D in a pharmaceutical company and being responsible for patents, gives an insight into the chemical industry with practical pointers and a ‘hands on’ approach. Said module covers issues such as the protection of inventions in chemistry and pharmacy and the drafting of the patent application, the evaluation of the risk of infringement, a brief introduction to patentability and infringement search tools in chemistry and pharmacy, extensions of patent protection, data exclusivity, and the experimental exception.

Monica Lopez taught the module of Biotechnology and Biomedicine and addressed specific questions regarding patents in this sector, particularly in Europe and the USA. With her wealth of experience and knowledge Monica highlighted issues such as exceptions and exclusions in the EPO, patentable subject matter in the USPTO, particular aspects of patent applications for biotechnological inventions, sequence searches in free databases and general bases of patentability in the EPO and the USPTO.