Express Guide to Monthly Gene-related U.S. Patents and Patent Applications

Who uses this section? Patent attorneys and patent agents, technology transfer and licensing specialists, consultants, scientists, inventors, market researchers, job seekers and start-up companies all have different reasons for scanning our monthly updates of the U.S. Patent Office gene-related intellectual property postings. Some examples:

Patent attorneys and agents often seek strategic partners for their clients (see Strategic Partnering). These partners could have technology or know-how that their clients need. Their clients may wish to sell their own intellectual property to those with related inventions or determine if any infringement exists.

Technology transfer and licensing specialists buy (in-license) or sell (license or out-license) intellectual property on behalf of their clients or institutions.

Consultants need to be able to identify marketing and other opportunities for their clients.

Scientists and their patent professionals need to monitor patent applications to discover what is state-of-the-art of a technology.

Inventors may be looking to monetize their inventions by selling them to organizations with allied technology.

Market researchers are able to identify which organizations are investing in which new technologies and applications.

Job seekers may be looking for organizations who could use their skills or may be wanting to determine the patent portfolio of a specific organization.

Start-up companies may be wanting to perform contract search for established organizations that could use their skills.

Our focus. We cover U.S., rather than world (international), patents for several reasons: 1) we have limited resources; 2) the U.S. is still world's largest biotech market; 3) smaller organizations worldwide often apply for patent protection in the U.S. first before they invest in worldwide patent protection.

Content. The U.S. Patent Office posts new patents and patent applications weekly. We research and compile each month's gene-related patents and patent applications, then categorize them by major classification and sort by assignee (patents are assigned mostly to organizations, whereas patent application assignees often list individual researchers as well as organizations) within each classification. Document number, title, date issued or posted and originating country are also included in the monthly reports.  URLs for locating the full text of U.S. patents and patent applications by their document number appear at the top of the monthly pdf files. As of December 2011 there are a total of 7,016 gene-related U.S. patents and 14,845 gene-related U.S. patent applications listed -- 21,861 in all.

Read Paul Tedesco's "Quick Insights" guest article Protecting Trade Secrets.