My team is about to start work on a medicinal plant from different countries. But few of them are patented by people, some even by governments. How can I work with them?
If I'm not mistaken, you can do basic research on most things. There might be a problem if you try to commercialize anything from that basic research.
Thank you for you suggestion. Will you please tell me if we can publish our work with proper citation of the patent?
You can do that, but a patent is not a peer reviewed publication. It is a legal document.
You don't have to cite a patent if it is irrelevant to the research you are publishing. If it is relevant, you can cite the papers that the patent is built on.
There is no general answer to whether you can work with those plants. As Steingrimus says,it depends on what you want to do. You will have to go through each of the patents and analyse basically three things:
(1) Are they just patent applications or granted patents
(2) Which claims are granted, like their USE and maybe a WAY OF MANUFACTURE, say work-up of the plants to generate a commercial product
(3) In which country / territory are the patents upheld
In case you would like to do something with the plants that is protected by a patent valid for your territory, you have to obtain a license. The patents contain the information about the applicant, so you can easily find out which company you would have to talk to.
I disagree with Steingrimur's second answer, if the invention is built on (can be inferred from) publications, it is likely not patentable anymore because the papers would be considered novelty-destroying prior art (although that varies from European to US law).
In general, the patent comes before the paper (if done properly). I generally see patents as very important primary sources of scientific information and encourage you to cite them!
The easiest way to cite a patent is by its number. These numbers indicate which patent office is responsible for the patent. The numbers are unique numbers such that it is easy to get the full information if needed. Different patent offices use sometimes clumsy dashes and slashes but I recommend the European Patent Office nomenclature, like US6472439B1 or WO200047992A1 or EP1151292B1. The last two characters contain useful information, too. They are called "Kind Code", basically A1 means patent application and B1 means granted patent, but please refer to the exact definitions for each patent office. Also, journals ussually have standard ways to cite patents, just inquire.
yes you can.... but you should design your experiments with novel objectives
Whole plants can not be patented. You pobably mean some patented extract or compount with potential activity from a certain plant. I guess, you can work on the same plant in different direction.
Definitely you can work but you can report your results only if they are different than the patented results. You can try to find a way that you work differently from the claimed procedures and methods of the patent. Specifically in case of plants, either phytochemical isolation procedures, extraction methods, the use of specific plant parts and the active compounds, and pharmacological activities are patented. So keep in mind what is already done and plan your work accordingly.
I have experience of working on such a plant. I did the work and my work got published in a reputed journal. I also cited the patent in references. Only thing was my results were novel than that reported in patent. In my case, the patent arrived after I was already on completion of my work. Still results were different and it worked.
Gud Luck and regards
Hi, Devashish, I think you can work with the patented material, but you can not used it for commercial purposes. Here you can find a discussion about patented plants: http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/63/3/1069.abstract
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering