Protecting the 'Trojan Horse' drug key to keeping a struggling field viable

An Expert View column on how a valuable patent protection encourages development and helps to fund future battles provided by Robert Watson (pictured above, right), partner, and Sarah Kostiuk-Smith (left), European patent attorney, from Mewburn Ellis.

The discovery and development of antibiotics is one of the most significant advances in human history.

It is now more than 90 years since Alexander Fleming’s first petri dish observations sparked the path to the wonder drug penicillin, and in that time innumerable lives have been saved, and once potentially deadly surgical procedures have become viewed as routine.