Intellectual property protection: strategies for antibody inventions.

In the last decade, therapeutic antibodies have become one of the commercially most successful classes of biopharmaceutical drugs. Major drug manufacturers who have successfully managed to occupy this new market, as well as biotechnology firms, some of which have experienced a quick growth and are now on par with the former, owe part of their success to suitable intellectual property strategies. This article provides an overview of the current thinking on antibody-related patents, and discusses strategies for protecting the antibody products of the future.