For most patent attorneys, an invention arrives already named: a molecule, a device, a method. In translational science, Dr Anji Miller argues, the invention itself is still being worked out while the protection strategy has to run alongside it, sometimes years before anyone can say exactly what the final product will be.
Anji is Senior Partner for Academic Engagement at LifeArc. She joined FICPI Focus 45 host Louis-Pierre Gravelle, Deputy Secretary General of FICPI and Partner at Dipchand, to talk about how LifeArc moves discoveries in rare disease research from the lab toward patients. LifeArc is an independent UK charity that grew out of the Medical Research Council's own technology transfer arm, and much of its work sits in indications so rare that, as Anji puts it: "it's a long path from bench to bedside".
Publication is the currency, protection is the insurance
The first tension Anji names is one that every attorney working with academic inventors will recognise: researchers are judged, funded and promoted on publication, not patents. "The currency of your success is publication," she says, and that pressure arrives early, often before a strategy for protecting the underlying technology exists.
Her answer is not to slow publication down but to get the IP conversation started earlier and keep it running alongside the research, rather than after it. That means early, repeated conversations between the researcher, the technology transfer office and the attorney, the kind of coordination many FICPI members will recognise from working across institutions and jurisdictions.
The default, in Anji's account, is not to file too early. But that default gives way the moment disclosure becomes imminent, or after a premature disclosure has already happened and a filing is what limits the damage. Which situation you end up in depends less on drafting skill than on whether the researcher, the technology transfer office and the attorney were talking to each other early enough to see it coming.
A portfolio is not a strategy
Anji is direct about what she looks for when she assesses whether a technology is ready to progress: not the size of a patent portfolio, but whether it holds together.
"You can have a whole load of patents and they don't really relate to the true invention that's going to come out of it."
A handful of well-chosen patents that map onto the actual product, its use and its data package will do more for a technology's prospects than a wide filing programme that looks impressive but does not cohere. For an attorney advising in this space, that reframes the job: less "how much can we protect" and more "does what we've protected match what this will become".
Three roles, not one
The reason this works at all, in Anji's account, is that nobody is expected to do anyone else's job. The researcher understands the science. The innovation professional, her own role, understands the ecosystem, the funding and the translational pathway. The attorney understands protection.
"The patent attorney is not going to try and be the scientist. It's really working together and realising the value of all these parts coming together to move the technologies forward."
For attorneys, that is a specific invitation: bring judgement and challenge to the table, ask the researcher what they think the invention is, and trust that the innovation professional sitting alongside you is doing the equivalent work on the commercial and funding side.
FICPI's view
Translational science, and rare disease research in particular, asks IP attorneys to operate well outside their own specialism: reading a technology readiness level, understanding an orphan drug designation, weighing a funder's obligations against an inventor's freedom to publish.
Few attorneys will have seen enough of all of this on their own. It is the kind of judgement that gets sharper through comparing notes with colleagues who have advised in similar territory, in other jurisdictions, working with other funders and other technology transfer offices. That is the value of a global community built on trusted relationships between independent practitioners: not answers handed down, but perspective built from people who have sat at that three-way table before.
FICPI uniquely combines education and advocacy on topics around patents and trade marks, with a focus on developing the professional excellence of its individual members who are independent IP attorneys from across the world.
Next steps
- Listen to the full FICPI Focus 45 conversation with Dr Anji Miller for her complete account of how LifeArc builds IP strategy into translational research from the earliest stages and hear how these conversations play out in practice across the FICPI community. FICPI members may view the recording of this episode from 17 June 2026: https://ficpi.org/on-demand (log in required).
- Audio-only versions of the episodes are available to any interested parties across major podcast platforms – search for ‘FICPI Focus 45’.
- FICPI webinars are open to any interested party. Find out what’s upcoming at: https://ficpi.org/eventstraining/upcoming-webinars
- Explore areas such as: discovery vs. invention in patent law; patentability of biological and therapeutic inventions; sufficiency/enablement and the role of experimental data; G 2/21 EPO case law; strategies for filing when the scientific picture is still evolving; and how patent strategy should be reassessed as translational research progresses.
- Find out more about FICPI’s Study & Work Group on Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology (CET 5) or contact their Chair: Rowan Joseph.
This article was generated by AI using careful prompts from our Communications Committee, review from our IP attorney Editorial Board, and editing from our expert editor.