The scope of the biotech industry is huge - in medicine, blood products, hormones, antibiotics, vaccines, and monoclonal antibodies spring to mind. However, thousands of applications have been patented in agriculture, food processing and industry, such as microbial mineral leaching, waste composting, and oil spill cleanup.
Patent protection is critical in order to protect such an investment of time and money.
The university encourages faculty and staff to disclose all possible inventions. Currently about half our invention disclosures involve biotechnology. These service agreements often lead to licensing arrangements profitable to the University and the departments involved. Most universities look to biotech as area where new discoveries can be quickly turned into profitable applications, since discoveries in genetic engineering often have immediate utility in the form of useful products or processes. Discovering a product of nature not known before is not patentable.