A patent is a contract between the inventor or the company and the state, that allows the inventor to stop others from commercially benefiting from the invention for a limited time in a specific country or area.
A patent provides a 20 years' protection against unauthorized use or copying of the invention, and increases the likelihood of commercial investment in technology.

An invention to be patented has to meet three basic requirements:
() Novelty: the invention cannot be patented if it is already known to the public
() Inventiveness: the invention cannot be obvious;
() Industrial applicability: the invention needs to have a potential market.

What is patentable?
() Biological material like: viruses, microorganisms, proteins, DNA sequences whose function is known, etc;
() Transgenic animals with specific genetic features that can be used to produce new drugs to treat for example, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis etc;
() Transgenic plants with improved qualities that affect their nutritional properties or their resistance to insects and diseases;
() Plants and animal varieties are not patentable because they are the result of biological (natural) methods of production

There are certain things that are deemed to be un-patentable:
() A discovery, scientific theory or mathematical method.
() A literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or any aesthetic work whatsoever.
() A scheme, rule or method for performing a mental act, playing a game or doing a business, or a program for a computer (software).
() The presentation of information.
() Methods for surgical or therapeutic treatment of the human and animal body.
() Diagnostic methods applicable to humans and animals.

Protecting your ability to get a patent

Remember
() Any written or oral "prior disclosure" to any member of the general public (those outside the San Raffaele Biomedical Science Park community), can invalidate a patent.

Before you disclose any new aspects of your work:
() Think about possible commercial developments
() Contact us if you think your work has potential commercial interest (pozzi.paola@hsr.it)
() A patent application can be filed very quickly when necessary, and can significantly enhance the chances that a technology will be developed and generate further research funds for you.
() It is hardly ever necessary to delay a publication/talk/research poster in order to protect the technology it describes with a patent.
() If an inadvertent disclosure is made, patent protection in the US is still possible if filing is made within 12 months.

Patent process
It is not always straightforward to judge whether an invention is patentable, so scientists should contact us as early as possible by filing a Report of Invention Form to the Office of Biotechnology Transfer. The OBT will give a first evaluation on the patentability of the invention in terms of contents, prior art and potential market, then an Intellectual Property Committee composed of the scientific board and internal and external consultants will take the final decision on whether to file a patent.
If a decision is made not to file a patent then the Fondazione Centro San Raffaele del Monte Tabor will reassign the rights on the intellectual property to the inventor.

Do you have a new invention that you want to report to the Office of Biotechnology Transfer?
Then fill in the Report of Invention Form

Technology Development and Licensing
The Office of Biotechnology Transfer is pro-active in identifying research with commercial potential and in marketing new technologies to industry.
For this purpose it is very important to protect our Intellectual Property with Transfer Agreements (Material Transfer Agreement, MTA and Animal Transfer Agreement, ATA) whenever there is a transfer of technology or biological material to third parties. MTAs are contracts which rule the transfer of material that is not commercially available from the owner or licenser towards an external institution for research purposes only.
MTAs define questions regarding the property of the material transferred and of the modifications and developments done on it by the receiver, the secrecy on the material's feature and the rights on inventions and results developed from those materials.
Every time a scientist working at San Raffaele Scientific Institute needs to transfer material to another institution profit or non-profit or to obtain material from another institution a MTA agreement needs to be signed before any material is transferred. For evaluating and processing the shipping of the documents, please contact the OBT.

One of the Office of Biotechnology Transfer Centre principal activities is the negotiation of license agreements for technologies developed within the San Raffaele Scientific Institute.
A license agreement is required when a company wants to acquire the right to use or commercialize either an unpatented material, or a patented one, or a patent pending invention developed in the San Raffaele Scientific Institute. A license is a legal agreement by which the owner of the intellectual property grants the licensee the right to use and commercialise eventually after further development the invention. The agreement defines also the commercial value of the licensed material, and eventual rights of the licenser on the revenues derived from the commercialization of the product. The Office of Biotechnology Transfer plays an important role in assessing a value to the property and in the negotiation of the best ways to support San Raffaele research in order to develop product of use and value for the community.