Professor Aisling McMahon and Dr Opeyemi Kolawole have published an article entitled “Intellectual property rights over ‘integrated’ medical devices: the potential health impacts and bioethical implications of rightsholders’ control” in the Medical Law Review. The Medical Law Review is a leading international peer-reviewed journal in the health law field.
This article is available open access here and is based on research conducted as part of the European Research Council-funded PatentsInHumans project.
This article examines a range of key intellectual property rights (IPRs) that can be applicable to different aspects or elements of so-called ‘integrated’ medical devices, which are understood for the purposes of this article as being medical devices that are attachable to or implanted into the human body, such as prostheses or pacemakers. The article provides an overview of the types of IPRs that can apply over such medical devices. It then argues that IPRs, alongside incentivizing technological development of certain devices, also give rightsholders control over key aspects of how individuals use and access IP-protected devices. The article illustrates how this can impact access to and delivery of devices, and some of the bioethical implications that can arise in such contexts, depending on how IPRs are used. Accordingly, the article argues that greater understanding and analysis is needed within the health law community around the potential impacts of IPRs over medical devices.
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