Intellectual Property Management

Running head: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 0
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
Name of Student
Institution affiliation
0

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 1
INTRODUCTION
Secrecy and strict guarding of the pharmaceutical formulas used in coming up with the
various medicines and supplements manufactured in China and by the major Chinese
corporations has always been part of the Chinese policy. The case study looks at two of the most
successful pharmaceutical companies in China, China TCM and PuraPharm, the write-up will
critically assess their trade secrets. The companies’ trade secrets are similar and also different in
some ways despite the foundational philosophy behind them being similar. The trade secrets are
based on the inherent Chinese-rooted need for protecting their national resources and on modern
laws that grant Chinese inventors monopoly for inventions.
DIFFERENCES
PuraPharm being a Hong Kong based company depicts some kind of openness in the way
they go about business. The company, by virtue of being based in Hong Kong where democracy
is more welcome and the need for cooperation with the outside world, tends to be less secretive
(Effron, 2016). Nonetheless, PuraPharm still maintains the original formulas for most of the base
pharmaceutical fundamental concoctions and will not gladly share those openly. However,
unlike China TCM, the company offers these concoctions as by-products to other pharmaceutical
manufacturers with strict secrecy undertakings and agreements on their use and applications.
The company, according to their vision statement admits that cooperation is very vital
and the goal of every pharmaceutical products manufacturer is dedicating themselves to
humanity's health (PuraPharm Corporation Limited, 2018). The company also envisions a
situation whereby it will be a leading and one of the most admired company in global
pharmaceutical products arena through it success in modernization of traditional medicine
globally (Schuman, 2017). In attaining the goal, the company vowed to ensure that it will involve
investors, business partners and the global community in fighting some of the deadliest ailments
affecting humanity. The endeavor has therefore soften their resolve in upholding total secrecy
but instead has only left PuraPharm with only the need to protect the base trade secrets of only
restriction the base pharmaceutical concoctions (Staff and Sandeen, 2017). The partial openness
has currently led to integration and sharing of research and development data with many global
pharmaceutical giants. As of April 2019, the company had active collaborations with companies
in USA, Canada, India and Australia.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 2
Unlike PuraPharm, China TCM tends to concentrate more on the Chinese market. Of
course the Chinese market currently holds more than a billion people. The Chinese patriotism
and policy favors Chinese medicine and makes the company virtually unopposed when it comes
to competition with foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers (Menell, 2017). In a bid to also ensure
that they fully dominate the market, China TCM has gone an extra step and acquired or managed
to form alliances with over 10 different subsidiaries scattered all over China. The mergers and
partnerships can be considered as very important and they are indicative of a very important
trade secret because they ensure a wider reach of their pharmaceutical products.
UNIQUNESS AND CHARACTERISTICS
The holders of the traditional Chinese medical knowledge have a strict adhere to
confidentiality. Furthermore, the government also maintains the same policy and uses strict laws
and policies in ensurong that this knowledge does not go to the outside world. According to
Effron (2016), the efforts invloved in keeping the pharmaceutical formulations as a national and
proffessional trade secrets makes China as one of the nations with very exceptional medicinal
formulations. However, as more and more foreign companies set up in China, intellectual
property cases in China are increasing in number as shown on table 1.1. The other uniqueness
of the trade secret is that the information related to medical formulations is that they ensure that
the base formulations are not even known to the regulatory bodies but a few operatives.
Therefore the medicine that comes out of China and most of the ones listed for sale by
PuraPahram and China TCM have ingredients that are unknown to the public. In many other
jurisdcitions, trade sectrets are kept but declared to the governments of the day. In China these
trade secrets are so unique that even the government has to rely on the confidentiality of the
holders of these information and they are only left to manage the end product, which is the
medicine.