Collaboration with ITEMAS

On April 21, a conference was held at the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) to present the collaboration agreement signed last March between the ITEMAS platform, the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) and the SPTO.

ITEMAS is a platform of the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) to support R&D&I in Biomedicine and Health Sciences whose aim is to effectively boost the industrial capacity generated by the National Health System and the real transfer of the results.

The Director of the SPTO, the coordinator of the ITEMAS platform and the head of the ISCIII’s Knowledge Transfer office inaugurated the session. They presented the tools that both the ITEMAS platform and the SPTO make available to the innovation units of the hospitals and healthcare institutes included in the aforementioned platform.

The different actions carried out since 2014, when the SPTO began to collaborate with ITEMAS by jointly producing the Medical Device Technology Surveillance Bulletin, training and informative seminars both in person and online, search workshops, etc., were reviewed.

Likewise, the heads of the innovation units of three member entities of the platform showed with specific cases the way in which they use industrial property in their daily practice. Specifically, IDIVAL (Instituto de Investigacion Sanitaria del Hospital Valdecilla de Cantabria) presented how it managed to transfer the utility model that protects a new multilayer dressing for negative pressure therapies to the multinational 3M.

For its part, IBIMA platform BIONAND (Biomedical Research Institute of Malaga), explained how they use patents, utility models and trademarks to protect their innovations, also referring to the frequent use they make of the Patent Technology Reports made by the SPTO. In addition, they made a special mention of the rapid manufacturing robust artificial respirator developed in this institution, winner of the award for the best Spanish utility model 2021 and used in numerous hospitals in Spain and in different countries.

Finally, IdiPAZ (Research Institute of the La Paz hospital) emphasized the usefulness of trademarks to protect innovations by showing its own experience.

The session concluded with an express reference to the Patent Technology Reports (ITP) requested over the last 12 years. Thus, since 2015, when the first agreement with ITEMAS was signed, the number of ITPs requested by members of the platform has quadrupled.

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