Intellectual Property: a powerful tool to develop biotech researchmbt_172 493..506

Today biotechnology is perhaps the most important technology field because of the strong health and food implications. However, due to the nature of said technology, there is the need of a huge amount of investments to sustain the experimentation costs. Consequently, investors aim to safeguard as much as possible their investments. Intellectual Property, and in particular patents, has been demonstrated to actu-ally constitute a powerful tool to help them. Moreover, patents represent an extremely important means to disclose biotechnology inventions. Patentable bio-technology inventions involve products as nucleotide and amino acid sequences, microorganisms, pro-cesses or methods for modifying said products, uses for the manufacture of medicaments, etc. There are several ways to protect inventions, but all follow the three main patentability requirements: novelty, inven-tive step and industrial application