Management of intellectual property rights in European biotechnology firms

The aim of this article is to observe a "real world picture" of how European biotechnology firms manage their inventions, and in particular, how they make use of patent protection. The intention is to compare the behavior and the requirements of the biotechnology industry with the existing legal framework in Europe, to determine industrial needs, anti to identify insufficiencies in the institutional settings. The analysis focuses besides the general competitive performance of Europe in comparison to the United States on the use of patents by firms in different European countries, the decision to keep inventions secret or to patent. the different procedural ways to apply for patent protection, as well as the importance of patenting related costs and strategic uses of patenting. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc.