Biotech
Protect Biotech Innovations Before They Reach the Market
Biotech R&D cycles are long and expensive. Protect your discoveries from day one with blockchain-verified timestamps that prove priority without revealing your secrets.
The Challenge
IP Challenges in Biotech
Biotech companies face unique intellectual property risks that traditional protection methods struggle to address.
Long R&D Timelines Create Exposure
Biotech products take 10-15 years to develop. During this time, researchers move between labs, publish findings, and share data with partners — each interaction creating IP leakage risk.
Patents Require Full Disclosure
Filing a patent means publishing your discovery for the world to see. For biotech compounds and processes, this hands competitors a roadmap to work around your innovation.
Collaboration Creates IP Disputes
Joint ventures, CRO partnerships, and academic collaborations blur ownership. Without clear timestamped evidence, proving who discovered what first becomes nearly impossible.
Pre-Publication IP Vulnerability
Between discovery and publication lies a dangerous window where your research has no formal protection. Competitors monitoring your lab's activity could file first.
The Solution
How immut Protects Biotech IP
Blockchain-verified timestamps give biotech companies instant, court-ready proof of their innovations.
Timestamp Every Research Milestone
Record each experiment, compound, and dataset on the blockchain as you work. Build an irrefutable timeline of innovation without revealing any details.
Protect Before Collaboration
Timestamp your IP before sharing with CROs, partners, or investors. If disputes arise, you have court-ready proof of what you had before disclosure.
Complement or Replace Patents
Use trade secrets with blockchain timestamps for processes and methods that are better kept confidential. Save patent costs for inventions that truly need them.
Secure Priority for Publications
Establish a verifiable creation date before submitting to journals. Protect your priority even during the peer review process.
Real-World Scenario
A Day in the Life: Biotech Startup Protecting a Novel Compound
A biotech startup discovers a promising compound for treating autoimmune disease. They're 18 months from clinical trials and need to share data with a potential pharma partner for licensing discussions.
The lead scientist uploads the compound data, synthesis method, and initial efficacy results to immut. Each file is hashed and timestamped on the blockchain in 60 seconds.
Before the partner meeting, they timestamp the full data package they plan to share. This creates proof of exactly what they possessed before any disclosure.
During licensing negotiations, the partner claims they were already working on a similar compound. The startup presents their blockchain certificates showing timestamps from 18 months earlier.
The startup secures a favourable licensing deal with their priority clearly established by immutable blockchain evidence.
Court-ready proof of discovery priority — without filing a single patent or revealing any secrets publicly.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Can blockchain timestamps replace biotech patents?
For many biotech innovations — especially processes, methods, and formulas — trade secrets with blockchain timestamps provide stronger, cheaper protection than patents. Patents still make sense for products that can be reverse-engineered once marketed. The best strategy often combines both approaches.
Is blockchain evidence accepted in biotech IP disputes?
Yes. Blockchain timestamps are recognised as evidence in the UK, EU, and US courts. The UK Civil Evidence Act 1995 covers electronic records, and EU eIDAS Regulation explicitly accepts electronic timestamps. Chinese courts have accepted blockchain evidence since 2018.
How does immut protect sensitive biotech data?
immut never sees your files. Only a cryptographic hash (a mathematical fingerprint) is recorded on the blockchain. Your actual data stays on your systems. The hash proves the document existed at that timestamp without revealing its contents.
Can I timestamp lab notebooks and experimental data?
Absolutely. You can timestamp any file type — PDFs of lab notebooks, raw data files, images, spreadsheets, protocols, and more. Many biotech companies timestamp regularly to build a comprehensive timeline of their R&D.
What does it cost compared to a biotech patent?
A biotech patent typically costs £20,000-£80,000+ including international filings. immut starts free with the Starter plan, and Professional is $29/month for unlimited timestamps. That's over 99% cheaper than a single patent filing.
Ready to Protect Your Biotech IP?
Book a call to see how immut gives biotech companies instant, blockchain-verified proof of their innovations. Get protected on the call.