The IP training gap in drug development — and how I taught myself
Did you take a single course in university on patents or intellectual property? I didn’t—not one lecture. And looking back, it’s wild, because IP ends up shaping huge parts of how pharma R&D actually works—yet most of us are expected to figure it out on the fly once we’re on the job.
The On-the-Job IP Training Gap in Pharma R&D
In my first job, I quickly learned our plan wasn’t to commercialize the drug ourselves. It was to be acquired—and let the acquirer take it to market. In short, what we were really selling was a piece of paper: a patent.
What surprised me next was how little formal IP training there was on the job. We had trainings for safety, SOPs, and cybersecurity—of course. But patents? You were expected to create, recognize, and protect IP—without being taught the basics. My colleagues routinely talked about patents, but the closest thing to training was: “Sign and date your notebook.”
Bradford Sullivan, PhD
Vice-President & Co-Founder
Callan Pharma Services
How I Taught Myself Pharma IP
I started to teach myself IP by buying “Not So Obvious: An Introduction to Patent Law and Strategy” by Jeffrey Schox and reading it on my breaks from lab work. This book changed the course of my career. In it, I learned a patent doesn’t give you the right to make and sell—only the right to exclude others. Commercialization still depends on freedom to operate—a distinction we never talked about.
That lesson sparked an interest in—and love for—IP. I studied for months, took and passed the USPTO Registration Examination (the “patent bar”), which allows me to draft and prosecute patent applications—a skill set I use every day in my drug formulation work.
In future posts, I’m going to share a few IP basics I wish someone had explained to me earlier—practical stuff that actually changes how you plan experiments and formulate.
