Intellectual capital can be defined as a set of knowledge and skills that company has developed about making goods or services. Such a knowledge can be used for obtaining money or any other purpose. Meaning combines idea of intellect and know-how with the idea of capital. Any benefits gained from this kind of knowledge can be invested in producing more goods and services. One of the strongest and most competitive industry in the world and in U.S is Pharmaceutical industry . Supreme pledge to research and development is main reasons for its success. Intellectual property protection has a goal to insure return on investment and future profits. Discovering and testing a new drug is a process that requires approval from regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe. This process might cost millions of dollars per new product. After such a large investment has been made, next step is to obtain approvals in other nations. This approval is necessary so that new product can be sell as widely as possible. The main risk that pharmaceutical industry is facing is imitation. Once a product have been developed to be safe and effective risk is that another firm might enter the market with same or similar products. It is much cheaper and faster to invest in manufacturing process and developing existing and start competing with the pioneering firm with lower prices. If such imitation were widespread and rapid, pioneer company might not have ROI( return on investment) Inequality between drug finding and imitation costs, led pharmaceutical manufacturers to stress on the importance of the patent system. Well developed patent system can allow company to have 20 years of exclusive rights to their invention, in order for them to recover initial investment . Patent protection is one of the main reasons for conflict between the pharmaceutical manufacturers and growing nations. Most of the nations follow Paris Convention when dealing with issues regarding patent systems. Convention give nations freedom to design their patent laws as they pleased under the condition that there is no discriminate between local and foreign inventors. If there were any discrimination and differences in national intellectual property rules, economic activity might shift from one jurisdiction to another. In that case higher-protection rule will be destabilized by lower-protection rules of other jurisdictions’’. Standards for intellectual property protection have been established by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Aldo mechanisms for protection have been set, there are still some countries which are delaying implementation of these standards. Consequences of such a delays have negative effect on industry globally as well as on individual countries. Brazil, Russia, India, and China, are better known as the BRIC economies. These countries are growing markets with lot of opportunities for U.S firms. Unfortunately intellectual property violations are widely spread in all four countries, therefore U.S government has invested lot of effort to help these countries develop standards for intellectual capital protection in order to minimize risk and increase opportunities for U.S firms. Trademarks are used to differentiate products from those of competitors . Trademark might determine the success of a product in the marketplace and his recognition. It is essential to ensure that the company obtained exclusive rights over using specified trademark. to the . This is done by registering a trademark. It gives the company the exclusive right to prevent others from copying or using similar products under the same mark or similar mark. Protecting a trademark by registering should be the focus for the company when introducing new product to the market. Protected trademarks may also be licensed to other companies and be additional source of revenue.

Intellectual Capital http://www.termpaperslab.com/term-papers The Pharmaceutical industry and world intellectual property standards By Scherer, F M http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/3604388-1.html Intellectual property arbitrage: How foreign rules can affect domestic protection by Samuelson Pamela http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/University_of_California_Berkeley Intellectual Property Protection and the Pharmaceutical industry by Scherer, F M http://www.oblon.com/media/index.php?id=61 The Pharmaceutical industry and world intellectual property standards By Scherer, F M http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/3604388-1.html Arbitration and Mediation Center – Trademark database portal http://arbiter.wipo.int/trademark/output.html.