The Relevant Role That Searches Of Information Play In The Pharmaceutical Industry

In their constant efforts to assert Industrial Property protection, R&D-based pharmaceutical companies face several challenges through their subsidiaries in Mexico.

It is well known that the Mexican "linkage system" has helped to improve the communication network between both the Mexican Health and Industrial Property authorities by amending their respective Regulations, in order to prevent the issuance of health registration approvals for generic versions from medicaments still covered by valid patents.

Despite these relevant changes in the health and industrial property sectors, the situation has been just partly resolved to the R&D-based pharmaceutical industry. In solving certain issues, problems of other kinds arose. Particularly, the Mexican public institutions in charge of social security have misunderstood the real spirit of the linkage scheme, and regarding to government medicament purchases, they have made their bidding process available to the public in general instead of proceeding with a direct adjudication when the medicaments in question are covered by patents still in force.. In addition, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) only publishes, the patents referred to the active substance or drug in the corresponding Special Edition of the Industrial Property Gazette, and it is excluding the formulation/composition patents or the new use patents, among others.

Another interesting aspect is that since the linkage scheme was enacted, the R&D-based pharmaceutical companies have been requesting the publication of every one of their patents, provided that they comply with the linkage requirements. This request has come, either from their main offices, or through their Mexican subsidiaries. In this context, we have found that there is a lack of communication between the R&D-based companies and their Mexican subsidiaries. In most of the cases Mexican subsidiaries do not know which medicaments are being protected by a patent, or which is the number of the Mexican patents covering a certain medicament.

When facing this situation, the Mexican subsidiaries call their patent attorneys for advice. However, giving counsel may become a difficult task because sometimes, as it is already mentioned, they do not have sufficient information regarding the medicament at issue. Normally they have only the name of the active substance (generic denomination) and/or the name of its registered mark (TM). This makes more difficult to...