Nutritional anemia: Patent landscape

Anemia is the World's disease of great attention that generally indicates low hemoglobin concentration in blood. The developing countries are the prime victims of the disease. The majority of scientific publications also focus on these regions. However, patent research focusing on applied developments instead of fundamental scientific results, related to the solution of this problem, cannot be found. Since nutrition is an essential factor in anemia prevention, this article explores the inventive activity in this particular subject area. Although the nature of work is more of an overview, it notes differences in inventions between Western and Eastern countries. The West is more active in medicine and treatment methods, while the East focuses on food technology, enzymes, and microorganisms that promote the absorption of nutrients. At the same time, Western inventions also receive comprehensive protection in Asian countries. Asian inventors, on the contrary, rarely disseminate their results on a wide scale as patenting is limited to national jurisdiction and have a lesser impact on the state-of-the-art. However, the cause for such difference between the regions remains an open question and cannot be answered adequately without incorporating additional factors. Undoubtedly, one should reject the income factor since China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, are recognized as sources of innovations besides Western countries. Moreover, these Asian countries have sufficient resources for large-scale research in chemistry and pharmaceuticals.