A Grant for Medical Innovations

At Arizona State University, a patent lawyer has set up a grant to help the Barrow Neurological Institute protect medical innovations.  Steven Lisa is a patent lawyer and Arizona State University alumnus. He established the Lisa Family Foundation Innovation Grant in 2015. The grant allows for the creation of multiple neurological and neurosurgical projects.  Steven Lisa holds a degree in electrical engineering and uses his science background in his daily patent practice.  His grant has allowed the Barrow Innovation Center to produce many new patent proposals.  The grant has also paved the way for the creation of a specialized medical lab, the Barrow Innovation Center. Additionally, the center allows medical residents to create prototypes for medical devices in the neurology field.

Medical innovations and device patents are extremely popular. They account for a large percentage of patents granted every year.  Without patent protection, the money and time invested into the development of medical innovations can be overly costly. Another concern is that new devices may be quickly counterfeited by competitors if there are no proper legal safeguards in place.

Law Students Collaborate with Neurosurgeon Students on Patentability of Medical Innovations

Hoping to curb the practice, law students from the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at Arizona State University counsel medical residents in the patentability of their devices produced at the Barrow Innovation Center.  The two student groups work jointly in developing provisional patent applications. This is done under the combined supervision of licensed patent lawyers and senior neurosurgeons.  The medical residents bring their medical device ideas to meetings held monthly and jointly with the law students.  The patent lawyers and law students cooperate to evaluate the utility, application, and patentability of the medical device innovations.  The law students involved have a minimum of a four-year scientific or engineering degree. The students must also have taken a patent law curriculum.  Additionally, the students are to take over the provisional stage of the patenting process. The expectation is the students will produce non-provisional patents within a year.

With the help of legal counsel from the onset of creation, medical students hope to attract the proper investors. Investors can help to quickly bring their medical devices to market.  Early investment is especially helpful if the innovations or new devices require United States Food and Drug Administration approval, which can be a costly and drawn out process.

Having such a collaborative effort between medical and legal students brightens the future for both fields and will benefits patients as well in the long run.

About the Firm:

Klemchuk LLP is an Intellectual Property Law, Litigation, and Transactions law firm.  We offer comprehensive legal services including litigation as well as enforcement of all forms of IP as well as registration and licensing of patents, trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights.  The firm also provides a wide range of technology, Internet, e-commerce, and business services including business planning, formation, and financing, mergers and acquisitions, business litigation, data privacy, and domain name dispute resolution.

The firm also publishes the following blogs: Intellectual Property Law, Conversations with Innovators (interviews with thought leaders), Leaders in Law (discussions on timely law topics), as well as Culture Counts (thoughts on law firm culture and the business of the practice of law).