Prionics, which was founded in 1997, gained a world market share of 40 to 50 per cent in the last ten years with their antibody-based BSE tests. One could have lived well from this. Nevertheless, the company with Markus Moser as CEO has launched ten more diagnostic products for cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.

At present, the Prionics’ portfolio includes 29 international patents and three or four more are added each year. They come either from their own 20-man strong research department or are licences acquired from the academic world.

“Basically, each of our innovation projects aims at a formal IP right,” says Moser. Therefore, the Zuercher have built up a highly complex process which ranges from the combined patent and literature search (technology search) at the IPI as well as a bi-monthly monitoring of all projects and products to the creation of an internal database with selected third party patents.

However, this is not enough for the life science markets because, as has been the case in the pharmaceutical industry for a long time, a kind of balance of terror prevails in these markets. The market operators build up whole protective barriers around their products and fight on all relevant technological fronts for every inch of the market.