Abstract
The patenting of bioprinting techniques to make tissues and organs has quietly been going on for more than a decade. Anyone seeking to develop a product or service based upon bioprinting must be concerned about the patent landscape. This chapter will first discuss the various options available to protect the different aspects of bioprinting. Then, it will provide a summary of the landscape of utility patents that protect innovation in each of the three stages of bioprinting: (i) bioimaging + CAD + blueprint, (ii) bi-oink + bio-paper + bioprinter, and (iii) maturogens + biomonitoring + bioreactor. Lastly, the chapter will discuss certain exceptions to patent infringement for the development of bioprinted tissues and organs.
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Notes
- 1.
“Patents issued from design applications filed on or after May 13, 2015 shall be granted for the term of 15 years from the date of grant. Patents issued from design applications filed before May 13, 2015 shall be granted for the term of 14 years from the date of grant.” 35 USC § 173.
- 2.
Trade dress registration and common law protection vary from country to country. A company seeking to rely upon trade dress protection should seek legal counsel in the countries in which it plans to market.
- 3.
The standard for patenting software varies around the world. Software is difficult to patent in the USA. And patenting software in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, for example, is possible only when the claims recite the use of software working in concert with specific hardware, particularly when the invention resolves a technical problem and achieves a technical result.
References
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Esmond, R.W., Sterling, D. (2018). Bioprinting: The Intellectual Property Landscape. In: Ovsianikov, A., Yoo, J., Mironov, V. (eds) 3D Printing and Biofabrication. Reference Series in Biomedical Engineering(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45444-3_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45444-3_18
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