BioSpectrum India Magazine November issue BioSpectrum India Magazine | Page 43

www.biospectrumindia.com
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November 2017
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BioSpectrum
IP in
Start-up
ECOSYSTEM
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Durgesh Mukharya
Partner,
K&S Partners, India
In this age of innovation and technology,
Intellectual Property (IP) is an essential
element for an organization to sustain
and flourish over long periods of time.
This is particularly applicable for
organizations which rely heavily on R&D
to develop technology based solutions for
existing problems, and the biotech start-
up community is no different.
G
START-Ups
one are the days when exploitation of IP used to be
limited to large organizations with deep pockets.
Today, the technology driven economies have
made IP integral and almost synonymous to ‘valuation’
of a start-up or MSME. Many acquisitions of start-ups
in the recent past where the patented technology was at
the core of the deal, have corroborated this philosophy.
As is often the case with start-ups, funding and
sustainability become major hurdles that need to be
timely overcome for them to stay alive in the game. The
challenge is amplified multi-fold for a biotech start-up,
where the lab-to-market incubation time is relatively
long. This means that for the start-up to continue its
quest for success, funding must keep coming in regularly,
which in-turn means keeping the investors happy.
While the funding agencies in the recent times
have widened their arms to the start-up community,
the ROI expectations are also higher than ever before.
Investors are on a constant look out for a sense of
security to confirm that every dollar is well spent,
and that the organization believes in its technology, is
looking at safeguarding its interests and has the intent
to be aggressive against competition emulating them. IP
protection provides that comfort.
Though broadly IP encompasses trademarks,
copyrights, industrial design rights, and trade secrets,
patents form the most significant chunk for tech-driven
industries. Simply put, patents provide an innovator a
monopoly over a technological invention in a country,
typically for 20 years, and act as exclusionary rights
that prevent a third party from making, using, selling
or importing the patented innovation in a geography.
The idea is to incentivize innovation and advancement
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