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Full-Text Articles in Law
Patent Protection For Crispr: An Elsi Review, Jacob S. Sherkow
Patent Protection For Crispr: An Elsi Review, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
The revolutionary gene-editing technology, CRISPR, has raised numerous ethical, legal, and social concerns over its use. The technology is also subject to an increasing patent thicket that raises similar issues concerning patent licensing and research development. This essay reviews several of these challenges that have come to the fore since CRISPR’s development in 2012. In particular, the lucre and complications that have followed the CRISPR patent dispute may affect scientific collaboration among academic research institutions. Relatedly, universities’ adoption of “surrogate licensors” may also hinder downstream research. At the same time, research scientists and their institutions have also used CRISPR patents …
Patent Law's Reproducibility Paradox, Jacob S. Sherkow
Patent Law's Reproducibility Paradox, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
Clinical research faces a reproducibility crisis. Many recent clinical and preclinical studies appear to be irreproducible; their results cannot be verified by outside researchers. This is problematic for not only scientific reasons but legal ones: patents grounded in irreproducible research appear to fail their constitutional bargain of property rights in exchange for working disclosures of inventions. The culprit is likely patent law’s doctrine of enablement. Although the doctrine requires patents to enable others to make and use their claimed inventions, current difficulties in applying the doctrine mitigate or even actively dissuade reproducible data in patents. This Article assesses the difficulties …
The Natural Complexity Of Patent Eligibility, Jacob S. Sherkow
The Natural Complexity Of Patent Eligibility, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
It has long been assumed that the doctrine of patent eligibility’s prohibition of patents on “laws of nature,” “natural phenomena,” and “products of nature” rests on legalistic interpretations of those terms. But there is good reason to doubt this assumption. Since the doctrine’s inception, the Supreme Court has yet to provide any framework, formula, or factors explaining these “natural” terms. Rather, the Court has increasingly fixated on a list of scientific tropes, such as gravity, the heat of the Sun, and extracted metals, that it believes are true examples of “natural laws,” “phenomena,” and “products.”
An actual examination of scientific …
Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow
Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
Criminal and civil law differ greatly in their use of the element of intent. The purposes of intent in each legal system are tailored to effectuate very different goals. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 131 S. Ct. 2060 (2011), however, imported a criminal concept of intent — willful blindness — into the statute for patent infringement, a civil offense, despite these differences. This importation of a criminal law concept of intent into the patent statute is novel and calls for examination. This Article compares the purposes behind intent in criminal law with the …
Federal Trade Commission V. Actavis, Inc. And Reverse-Payment Or Pay-For-Delay Settlements, Jacob S. Sherkow
Federal Trade Commission V. Actavis, Inc. And Reverse-Payment Or Pay-For-Delay Settlements, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
An imminent US Supreme Court ruling should resolve one of the thorniest legal issues facing pharmaceutical companies today.
Negativing Invention, Jacob S. Sherkow
Negativing Invention, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
Since 1952, the patent statute has forbidden courts from discriminating against, or “negativing,” inventions according to how they were made, be it “long toil and experimentation” or a “flash of genius.” Now, in addressing whether an invention is “obvious,” courts must only examine whether the invention was obvious according to the arts pertinent to that invention — the “analogous” rather than “nonanalogous” arts. This article shows that this dichotomy has actually promoted method-of-invention discrimination in patent law because the subjectivity of the analogous art inquiry has increasingly “analogized” wide fields of prior art as technology has progressed. This, in turn, …