Intellectual Property Differentiates Local Orthopedic Industry

July 2011: OrthoWorx eNewsletter

Intellectual property (IP) plays heavily into a company’s perceived value. In the world of mergers and acquisitions, it is often part of sound business strategy to acquire a company for its IP or technologies to complete a product portfolio or to enter a new market. Companies rich in IP are perceived as progressive, innovative and successful.

“Intellectual property is imagination made real. It is the ownership of dream, an idea, an improvement, an emotion that we can touch, see, hear, and feel. It is an asset just like your home, your car, or your bank account.” (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/museum/1intell.htm) Formal protection of an idea manifests itself as patents, trademarks (registered and common law), service marks, copyrights and trade secrets. Taking all of these into account, it is difficult to fully measure the total IP activity within a given industry.

A great deal of IP is generated from the medical device industry, and specifically from Warsaw, Indiana, The Orthopedics Capital of the World. “The average patenting rate in the U.S. is five per 10,000 people; in Indiana it is 13 and in Warsaw it is 32,” according to Indiana’s Life Sciences Industry: 2002-2010, BioCrossroads June 2011.

We can drill deeper to Kosciusko County, based upon data from BioCrossroads Report: Warsaw, Indiana: The Orthopedics Capital of the World, September 2009. “From 2006 to 2008, 579 patent applications were submitted by inventors in Kosciusko County; approximately 475 of them related to orthopedic devices and procedures. During the same time period, the entire state of Indiana submitted 8,500 applications.”

The study continues, “Using only this one measure, one might say Kosciusko County is over 15 times more innovative than the US as a whole, and five times more innovative than the rest of Indiana. Warsaw’s performance with patent applications is particularly notable given the lack of a research universities located in the immediate area.”

The medical device companies do work independently with research universities in the region and across the United States. Also, within the past year OrthoWorx’s Innovation Initiative has been actively facilitating discussions with Indiana’s research universities to increase synergies and to help retain the area’s innovative and inventive spirit.