IP strategy for creating innovations in pharma domain

At the PLI Conference 2025, in yet another insightful session, Swati Veera, Head-IPM, Alivus Life Sciences (Formerly Glenmark Life Sciences) highlighted the role of IP in the pharma industry. She began by explaining the types of innovations – pioneering innovations, incremental innovations, products developed and improved over time and re-innovations that are prominently observed in the generics industry in re-formulations.

Veera explained how IP facilitates the commercialisation of the product from the lab to the market. The number of patents is an indicator of a company’s progress, capacity for R&D and scope of innovation. It helps a company to gain and retain its innovation based advantage. 

Additionally, IP protection allows the developer company the opportunity to recoup the heavy investment made in R&D, allowing it exclusive rights to develop the product for a certain duration of time. Veera further explained offensive and defensive patent application strategies. The objective of the offensive patent strategy is to dominate the market by preventing competitors from entering the technology area.

The defensive patent strategy is generally followed by smaller companies here patents are filed for creating prior art thereby preventing others from patenting similar inventions. The essence of the pharma industry lies in inventing novel drugs that address unmet medical needs, and enhance quality of life. Therefore, innovation vis-a-vis IP protection is crucial for the industry, was a key takeaway from her session.