Medical Patent Law: something to read in the doctor's surgery ...

Rather like freemasons, intellectual property enthusiasts have a strange, almost secret way of recognising each other. It was not hard for the IPKat -- himself an IP enthusiast of many years' standing -- to spot that Eddy Ventose (who was briefly profiled a year ago on the jiplp blog here), was another of that rare and precious species.  Eddy did not need to write, as one young soul did, "I live, eat and breathe IP"; all he had to do was to submit articles and case notes for publication in JIPLP in a breathless, high-velocity stream of highly-focused study and thought. Hurricane Eddy, incidentally, is Senior Lecturer in Law and Head, Intellectual Property Unit, Faculty of Law, in the Cave Hill Campus of University of the West Indies, in sunny Barbados -- a long way from The Old Nick in terms of distance, though not in spirit.

Medical Patent Law – The Challenges Of Medical Treatment is Eddy's book, just released by Edward Elgar Publishing. Although it is rooted in his doctoral thesis, it has been enriched by several years of subsequent research, writing and discussion. This is what the publisher has to say about it:

"This book provides a detailed and comparative examination of medical patent law and the issues at the heart of the medical treatment exclusion for therapeutic treatments, surgical treatments and diagnostic methods.

It first considers the historical basis for exclusion and the development of law and policy in Europe, the United States and other commonwealth countries. The book goes on to provide a detailed analysis of the issues related to new medical technologies, such as gene therapy, dosage regimes, and medical diagnostics, in light of the medical treatment exclusion.

Medical Patent Law will strongly appeal to patent agents and attorneys, solicitors and barristers working in patent and intellectual property law and medical law worldwide, as well as medical practitioners and healthcare professionals; scientists, researchers and managers in the chemicals, medical; pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries. Postgraduates on LLM medical law and intellectual property courses and academics specializing in medical law or patent law, will also find much to interest them".

This seems a fair enough description of a book which this Kat, in all fairness, cannot review in an objective manner.  A quick scan of the bibliography reveals a good many works which this Kat has edited, commissioned, written or wished he'd written, and the bits of text he's had a chance to read so far have a comfortingly and reassuringly familiar feel to them.  Until the second edition comes out, this is definitely a handy tome with which we IPers can wow our medical friends. It also makes an unusual, if perhaps expensive, Christmas present.

Bibliographical data: xxiv + 465 pages. Hardback. ISBN 978 1 84980 171 3. Regular price £120 (though you can buy it online from the publisher for just £108. Also available as an ebook under ISBN  978 0 85793 801 5. Rupture factor: low to medium. Web page here.