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Fda’S Efforts To Tame The 'Wild West' Of Regenerative Medicine, Christopher M. Holman Jan 2017

Fda’S Efforts To Tame The 'Wild West' Of Regenerative Medicine, Christopher M. Holman

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Stem cell-based regenerative therapies hold the potential to address a host of health concerns, particularly congenital, age-related, and trauma-induced injuries, and diseases involving organ and tissue degeneration, conditions that have proven refractory to conventional drug-based approaches. For the time being, however, there is little in the way of solid evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of most cell-based therapeutic approaches (with the notable exception of hematopoietic stem cells used to treat diseases of the blood and immune system). This Holman Report begins with an overview of the current uncertain regulatory status of regenerative medicine in the U.S., including several draft …


The Supreme Court’S Devaluation Of U.S. Patents, Christopher M. Holman Jan 2017

The Supreme Court’S Devaluation Of U.S. Patents, Christopher M. Holman

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In a span of three weeks during the spring of 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court issued three patent decisions, bringing the total number of patent decisions for the 2016-2017 term to six. This means that the October 2016 term ties the previous record of six patent decisions in the October 2014 term. This represents a tremendous increase in the number of patent decisions compared to earlier times, and particularly the early days of the Federal Circuit. For reference, during the first quarter of a century the Federal Circuit was in existence, the Supreme Court heard on average less than one …


In Defense Of Secondary Pharmaceutical Patents: Response To The Un's Guidelines For Pharmaceutical Patent Examination, Christopher M. Holman Jan 2017

In Defense Of Secondary Pharmaceutical Patents: Response To The Un's Guidelines For Pharmaceutical Patent Examination, Christopher M. Holman

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In 2015 the United Nations Development Programme issued a document entitled Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Patent Examination: Examining Pharmaceutical Patents from a Public Health Perspective (the “Guidelines”). The heart of the Guidelines is a category-by-category examination of eight types of “secondary” pharmaceutical patent claims: Markush claims; selection patents; polymorphs; enantiomers; salts; ethers and esters; compositions; doses; combinations; prodrugs; metabolites; and new medical uses. The Guidelines advise patent offices to apply heightened patentability requirements to these claims in a manner that would effectively deny patent protection to important pharmaceutical innovations currently afforded patent protection. In particular, the Guidelines postulate that many forms …


Charting The Contours Of Copyright Regime Optimized For Engineered Genetic Code, Christopher M. Holman Jan 2017

Charting The Contours Of Copyright Regime Optimized For Engineered Genetic Code, Christopher M. Holman

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There is a growing disconnect between the traditional patent-centric approach to protecting biotechnological innovation and the emerging intellectual property imperatives of “synthetic biology,” a promising new manifestation of biotechnology that enables the design and construction of artificial biological pathways, organisms or devices, as well as the redesign of existing natural biological systems. As explained in previous articles, one way to deal with this disconnect would be to expand the scope of copyrightable subject matter to encompass engineered genetic sequences, much in the way that copyright was expanded in the 1970s and 1980s to include computer programs. The present article expands …