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Science and Technology Law

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Selected Works

2014

Biotechnology

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Maintaining Competition In Copying: Narrowing The Scope Of Gene Patents, Oskar Liivak Dec 2014

Maintaining Competition In Copying: Narrowing The Scope Of Gene Patents, Oskar Liivak

Oskar Liivak

In supporting gene patents, the patent office, the courts and other supporters have assumed that gene discoveries are identical to traditional inventions and therefore the patent system should treat them as identical. In other words, they have assumed that the relatively broad claims that are used for traditional inventions are also appropriate for encouraging gene discovery. This article examines this assumption and finds that gene discoveries are critically different from traditional inventions and concludes that the patent system cannot treat them as identical.

As a doctrinal matter, this article applies the generally overlooked constitutional requirements of inventorship and originality and …


Patent Trolling--Why Bio & Pharmaceuticals Are At Risk, Robin C. Feldman, W. Nicholson Price Ii Dec 2013

Patent Trolling--Why Bio & Pharmaceuticals Are At Risk, Robin C. Feldman, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Robin C Feldman

Patent trolls — also known variously as non-practicing entities, patent assertion entities, and patent monetizers — are a top priority on legislative and regulatory reform agendas. In the modern debates, however, the biopharmaceutical industry goes conspicuously unmentioned. Although biopharmaceuticals are paradigmatically centered on patents, conventional wisdom holds that biopharmaceuticals are largely unthreatened by trolls. This article shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong, both theoretically and descriptively. In particular, the article presents a ground-breaking study of the life science holdings of 5 major universities to determine if these might be attractive to monetizers. 

This was deliberately a light, rather than …