Law Commons^™

The New Roaring Twenties: The Progressive Agenda For Antitrust And Consumer Protection Law, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Review

It is an opportune moment to consider the trajectory of antitrust law in the United States. We are witnessing today an inflection point in both federal and state antitrust enforcement and a growing skepticism by courts of the doctrinal orthodoxy that has characterized the antitrust jurisprudence of the last half century.

Inhuman Copyright Scene: The Forgotten Law Of Art In The Holocaust, Lior Zemer, Anat Lior

Utah Law Review

Artists, authors, musicians, and other creative individuals formed an integral part of the horrific life in the ghettos, concentration camps, and extermination camps during the Holocaust. Through their works, Jewish prisoners documented the atrocities of the Nazis and exposed the untold stories of six million Jews who walked or labored to death. The vast majority of the authors of these works were murdered in gas chambers, labor camps, and ghettos. While much has been written about looted works of art, which were stolen from Jewish families during the Nazi occupation, this material covers only one limited subset of questions relating …

The Open Covid Pledge: Design, Implementation And Preliminary Assessment Of An Intellectual Property Commons, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Review

Early during the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of widely-publicized incidents gave rise to concerns that holders of patents and other intellectual property (IP) rights could hinder the development, manufacture and distribution of essential medical devices, protective equipment and biomedical products. The global response to these concerns was swift and included the issuance of compulsory licensing orders by several national governments, as well as the proposal of a technology pool by the World Health Organization (WHO). Alongside these efforts, a group of scientific, engineering and legal experts created a lightweight, open framework under which IP holders could voluntarily pledge not to …

Vaccine Clinical Trials And Data Infrastructure, Ana Santos Rutschman

Utah Law Review

We find ourselves at a momentous turn in the history of vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a quasi-global vaccine race that not only compressed vaccine research and development (R&D) timelines, but also paved the way for the administration of a new type of vaccine technology – mRNA vaccines, which work in substantially different ways from the vaccines in use before the pandemic.

While the process of bringing emerging COVID-19 vaccines to market has taken place in an unusually short timeframe, it was largely predicated on the same scientific and regulatory processes that govern the development, approval and deployment of new …

Covid-19 And Its Impact(S) On Innovation, Clark Asay, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Utah Law Review

In previous work, we explored how certain characteristics of adversity are often more conducive to innovation than others. In this Article, prepared as part of the Lee E. Teitelbaum Utah Law Review Symposium—The Law & Ethics of Medical Research, we review some of that work and apply it specifically to the COVID-19 context. We conclude by assessing certain policy implications in light of how the COVID-19 pandemic has both spurred and hindered innovation.

Proceedings Of The 2020 Lee E. Teitelbaum Utah Law Review Symposium, Utah Law Review

Utah Law Review

In the autumn of 2020, the Utah Law Review, in cooperation with the S.J. Quinney College of Law Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences, convened a twoday virtual symposium exploring “The Law and Ethics of Medical Research.” On November 13th, leading scholars from across the country joined us for a panel discussion titled “Sharing Medical Research Data: Privacy and Confidentiality.” On November 20th, a second set of distinguished scholars and practitioners gathered virtually for three more panel discussions: “Clinical Trials—Legal and Ethical Issues in the Age of COVID-19,” “Intellectual Property and Medical Research,” and “Medical Research as a Public Health …

Mpeg La’S Use Of A Patent Pool To Solve The Crispr Industry’S Licensing Problems, Patrick Neville

Utah Law Review

Since 2012, CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology has revolutionized how scientists approach gene editing. CRISPR allows for easier modification and alteration of the genome. This technology has potential applications ranging from correcting genetic defects to the treatment and prevention of diseases—CRISPR’s potential upside is unquestionable. However, CRISPR’s current patent landscape presents a variety of roadblocks for research, innovation, and profit. This Note discusses the potential use of a patent pool to alleviate some of these roadblocks. This Note begins with a discussion of the independent administrative body attempting to create such a patent pool, MPEG LA, before …

Is The Supreme Court’S Patentable Subject Matter Test Overly Ambiguous? An Empirical Test, Jason D. Reinecke

Utah Law Review

This Article shows that the new two-step patent-eligibility test is not as unadministrable as at least its most ardent critics have suggested. More research is necessary to ascertain how much better the attorneys would have predicted court outcomes had they spent more time on their predictions and had access to more information.

The Conflation Of Patent Eligibility And Obviousness: Alice's Substitution Of Section 103, Paxton M. Lewis

Utah OnLaw: The Utah Law Review Online Supplement

Since the birth of the abstract ideas concept, the judiciary has struggled to define abstract idea and analyze what is patentable under this exception to Section 101. The Supreme Court’s decision in Alice has not clarified the complexities that have arisen from the abstract ideas category. Instead, it falls in line with the warnings of the dissent in Flook, where Justice Stewart advises against the majority’s use of “inventive application” because it conflates the Section 101 and Section 103 inquiries. In order to avoid such conflation, the Alice framework cannot be adopted. Step one of the framework should be …

A Market Reliance Theory For Frand Commitments And Other Patent Pledges, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Review

Patent holders are, with increasing frequency, making public promises to refrain from asserting patents under certain conditions, or to license patents on terms that are “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory” (FRAND). These promises or “patent pledges” generally precede formal license agreements and other contracts, but are nevertheless intended to induce the market to make expenditures and adopt common technology platforms without the fear of patent infringement. But despite their increasing prevalence, current contract, property, and antitrust law theories used to explain and enforce patent pledges have fallen short. Thus, a new theory is needed to secure the market-wide benefits that patent …