“Competitor Insight: Firms Reveal Medical Device Opportunities”
March 17, 2025Marshall Gerstein Partner Daniel T. Chavka was featured in a Managing IP article on March 17, 2025, where he provided insights on IP trends relating to medical device companies.
Chavka explains that “medical device businesses have become quite interested in trying to leverage existing patent publications to gain insights into their competitors and identify where protection is weak. Companies use these assessments to help guide their R&D efforts. The patent landscape assessments are something I’m seeing more frequently.”
Chavka further notes an increase in requests for assistance with FTO investigations. “[C]ompanies have started to perform these at the early stages of product development as opposed to waiting closer to the product launch… [and that] they’re looking for outside counsel to help them with these activities. They want the expertise of a patent attorney to assess what’s uncovered in the searches. They might also want help with doing workshops with technical folks to figure out what a certain patent means.”
When it comes to patent procurement, Chavka has found medical device companies to be increasingly motivated to file continuation applications. “As they become more IP savvy, they’re more realistic about the strength of a given patent. They understand that a clever competitor might find ways to design around their patent claims, so they are interested in pursuing varying scopes of protection across multiple applications in the same family.”
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