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Full-Text Articles in Law

Intellectual Property Issues In Genomics, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Aug 1996

Intellectual Property Issues In Genomics, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Controversy over intellectual property rights in the results of large-scale cDNA sequencing raises intriguing questions about the roles of the public and private sectors in genomics research, and about who stands to benefit (and who stands to lose) from the private appropriation of genomic information. While the US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected patent applications on cDNA fragments of unknown function from the National Institutes of Health, private firms have pursued three distinct strategies for exploiting unpatented cDNA sequence information: exclusive licensing, non-exclusive licensing and dedication to the public domain.


Patents: Help Or Hindrance To Technology Transfer?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Patents: Help Or Hindrance To Technology Transfer?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Book Chapters

Intellectual property is a broad heading used to refer to a wide variety of rights associated with inventions, discoveries, writings, artistic works, product designs, and designations of the source of goods and services. Patents and trade secrets are the most important of these sorts of intellectual properties in the field of biotechnology. One aspect of intellectual property that distinguishes it sharply from other forms of property-and for some people makes it harder to justify-is that intellectual properties may be possessed and used by many people simultaneously. This is not so for tangible property. If someone borrows my car, I cannot …


The Cosmological Question: A Response To Milner S. Ball's 'All The Company Of Heaven', Joseph Vining Jan 1996

The Cosmological Question: A Response To Milner S. Ball's 'All The Company Of Heaven', Joseph Vining

Articles

We do not disagree, and I do not doubt, that legal processes are sources of injustice, violent oppression, crushing of the spirit, destruction of lives, actual death. I have only to look at The Trial1 again. Nor do we disagree that there are strings of words, statements, put out by officials, lawyers, and lawyer-academics, often called "rules," that cannot be taken into oneself and that by their very nature evoke manipulation in response, avoidance if they cannot be ignored. In their name violent imposition of pure will occurs all the time, and power is exercised by those who can secure …


Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

The Human Genome Project provides fertile ground for studying the role of intellectual property at the wavering boundary between public and private research science. It involves a major commitment of both public and private research funds in an area that is of significant interest both to research scientists working in university and government laboratories and to commercial firms. It thus provides a wealth of new scientific discoveries that are simultaneously potential candidates for commercial development and inputs into further research. Its obvious implications for human health raise the stakes of getting the balance between private property and public access right, …


Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

This article revisits the logical and empirical basis for current government patent policy in order to shed light on the competing interests at stake and to begin to assess how the system is operating in practice. Such an inquiry is justified in part by the significance of federally-sponsored research and development to the overall U.S. research effort. Although the share of national expenditures for research and development borne by the federal government has declined since 1980, federal funding in 1995 still accounted for approximately thirty-six percent of total national outlays for research and development' and nearly fifty-eight percent of outlays …


It Started With Quinlan: The Ever Expanding 'Right To Die', Yale Kamisar Jan 1996

It Started With Quinlan: The Ever Expanding 'Right To Die', Yale Kamisar

Articles

Few rallying cries sound more straightforward than the "right to die"-but few are more fuzzy or more misunderstood. This becomes all too evident when comparing the right-to-die decision handed down by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month and the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in the Karen Ann Quinlan case twenty years ago. At different times, the "right to die" has embraced significantly different rights. On March 6, in Compassion in Dying v. Washington State, the Ninth Circuit held that because a Washington state statute prohibiting assisted suicide prevents physicians from providing assistance to competent, terminally …