‘Competitor Insight’: Firms Reveal Medical Device Opportunities

Director Rich Coller spoke to Managing Intellectual Property about the work and trends that law firms are seeing across the medical device sector, including opportunities for IP due diligence, where he says there seems to be an uptick, as established medical device businesses will acquire start-ups to help fill gaps in product lines.

“IP is typically an important if not the most important driver in those transactions, so we’ve seen consistent or even an uptick in that sort of diligence work.” He adds that in the past, most IP due diligence transactions focused on U.S. or European based companies, and though these businesses had global portfolios, they were mostly anchored to the United States or Europe. “Now, you still have tons of activity in the U.S. and Europe but over the past five years or so, we’ve seen a lot more activity either where the innovation is occurring in Asia or where there’s just more emphasis on filings beyond the U.S. and Europe.” He says this makes the transactions a little more complicated than they used to be because they’re more global.

On the subject of navigating the effects of AI on medical devices, Coller says a lot of companies are finding that AI is a powerful tool to provide better or faster diagnostics. “Once AI is involved, that changes the nature of the conversations we’re having,” he says, adding “we’re typically asking in our invention disclosure interview whether AI was used in a development of a product or – to the extent it provides a diagnosis – if AI was involved in that.”

He also comments on uncertainty in the medical device industry, and notes that this is a time of disruption. “A lot of medical device research and innovation is coming out of work done at hospitals, universities and start-ups and requires regulatory approval,” he says. “I find myself asking if a lack of federal funding – if all this goes through – will harm medical device research and reduce the innovation pipeline,” he says.