Digital Commons Network^™

Top Ten Biotechnology Patent Cases Of 2024: Loper Bright, Federal Circuit Turmoil, Patent Term Adjustment, And Naturally Occurring Nucleic Acids, Kevin E. Noonan, Andrew W. Torrance

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

A pivotal year for biotechnology patent law, 2024 was marked by consequential court rulings and evolving legal frameworks. This article surveys the ten most significant judicial decisions impacting biotech patents, highlighting major themes and trends in policy, litigation, and regulation. Courts at all levels grappled with core patentability requirements in the life sciences, from the Supreme Court’s continued laissez-faire stance on subject-matter eligibility to the Federal Circuit’s stringent enforcement of disclosure sufficiency rules.

Unwarranted Warrants? An Empirical Analysis Of Judicial Review In Search And Seizure, Miguel De Figueiredo, Brett Hashimoto, Dane Thorley

Faculty Articles and Papers

Every year, police perform searches governed by the Fourth Amendment on hundreds of thousands of individuals and their property throughout the United States. Many of the academy’s most decorated scholars have focused on the genesis and jurisprudential nature of the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Surprisingly, we know almost nothing about how the Fourth Amendment regulates searchers and how searches actually work in practice.

In this Article, we pull back the curtain on the search and seizure process by presenting the largest quantitative study of warrants of any kind. We analyze over 33,000 warrant applications filed through Utah’s “e-warrants” system over …

Genetic Privacy, Ifeoma Ajunwa, Forrest Briscoe

Indiana Law Journal

The last decade has brought many technological advances to genetic testing. Increasingly, genetic testing, which was previously reserved for clinical or medical settings, has made its way to other spaces. Most significantly, we are now seeing the re-introduction of genetic testing to the workplace. Although the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which became law in 2009, would seemingly prohibit genetic testing in the workplace, genetic testing, as part of workplace wellness programs, is lawful under the aegis of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This poses a threat to genetic privacy in the workplace. While some, like the actor Angelina Jolie, …

Color Inside The Lines: Achieving Pharmaceutical Deal Certainty When The Courts Keep Redrawing The Ip Lines, James Farrington

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

In The Genome Defense, Jorge Contreras vividly describes the story of how gene patents were challenged in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics and the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the USPTO’s long-standing practice of allowing patents on human genes. This Article examines how pharmaceutical companies navigate intellectual property challenges in the wake of the Myriad decision and other landmark cases that have redrawn the boundaries of patent-eligible subject matter. Drawing on the Author’s 35 years of experience in life science transactions, the Article analyzes three key strategies that pharmaceutical companies employ: (1) adapting their business and licensing …

From Myriad To Moderna: The Modern (Bio)Pharmaceutical Company, Ana Santos Rutschman

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article examines the emergence of two modern pharmaceutical companies: Myriad and Moderna. After providing a brief background on each company, this Article contrasts them across the following areas: the technologies they have brought to market; their location; their start-up stages and the role that venture capital played in catalyzing their evolution from start-ups to large corporate structures; their relationships with other entities in the private sector, in academia and in the public sector; and their intellectual property and licensing strategies.

Technology Competency Road Map In Rhode Island: Reforming Professional Rules And Continuing Legal Education With Modern Educational Frameworks And Instructional Design Principles To Protect Clients, Myrta L. Ventura

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Study Of The Hague System Of International Design Patent Protection Under The Paradigm Of Global Administrative Law, Vaidehi Bachoti

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

It’S Time To Rethink The Law Of Armed Conflict, Joshua Andresen

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Judicial Opinions Of Sandra Schultz Newman, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Judge Of The Commonwealth Court Of Pennsylvania, 1993-1995.

Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of Pennsylvania, 1996-2006.

Presented In A Special Ceremony Of The Supreme Court Of Pennsylvania In Naming Its Courtroom In Philadelphia On September 9, 2025.

compiled by Joel Fishman, PH.D., M.L.S.

Water, Water, Everywhere, And Not A Drop Of Justice: International Water Crimes In The Anthropocene, Matthew J. D’Amato

Student Works

No abstract provided.

A Lesson To Learn: Transgender Students Face Discriminatory School Policies In Texas, Randy Terhune

Student Works

No abstract provided.

A Conviction In Jeopardy: The Mysterious Case Against Scott Peterson, Jolie Bodner Zangari

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

A New State Constitutional Right To Informational Privacy: The Origins Speak, Albert E. Scherr, Neal Kurk

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] This article occupies the space between the ongoing, newly energized development of state constitutional law and the fraught public policy field of privacy protections. It analyzes a new state constitutional provision that is explicitly and exclusively about information privacy. The provision, Part I, Article 2b9 of the New Hampshire Constitution,10 reads as follows: An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.11 The provision extends an individual’s privacy right significantly beyond that of both the federal and New Hampshire state constitutions. It operates at the intersection of privacy and …

Compelled Contraception, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

Can the federal government insist that people use contraceptives? It may come as a surprise to learn that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has done just that as a condition for allowing access to some pharmaceutical products that create a serious risk of birth defects. Over the last few decades, the agency has demanded that patients using certain teratogenic agents—now numbering over a dozen drugs prescribed for a variety of conditions, ranging from severe acne and psoriasis to multiple myeloma and pulmonary hypertension—agree to avoid becoming pregnant, sometimes for years after completing their course of treatment. Undoubtedly the …

Administrative Forum Shopping, Amy L. Stein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Allowing private parties in litigation to stack the deck in their favor through forum shopping is standard fare in the United States. But not everyone realizes that public legislators engage in a similar exercise when they stack the deck in one party’s favor through “jurisdiction-stripping” or “jurisdiction-channeling” provisions. Congress can strip federal courts of all or some of its jurisdiction, channel jurisdiction over a particular class of cases into one particular court, and even strip the U.S. Supreme Court of its appellate jurisdiction. Understandably, this last category has received the most attention, as scholars are drawn to the penultimate conflict …

Litigating Predator Management, John A. Erwin

UF Law Faculty Publications

Despite significant gains over the last half-century, predators such as mountain lions, wolves, and bears are in the crosshairs once again. Scientific management, democratic principles, and the holding of wildlife resources in trust for the public are all foundational pillars of the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation, yet state wildlife agencies and legislatures routinely fail to uphold these values where predators are concerned. Many of these tensions were thrust into the public consciousness in 2020 when gray wolves were temporarily delisted under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), resulting in a disastrous wolf hunting season in Wisconsin. States that have …

Flaws In The Preemption Defense To Liability Claims Against Generic Drug Manufacturers, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

More than a dozen years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court decided that federal preemption protects manufacturers of generic (but not brand-name) drugs from most types of products liability claims. This seemingly arbitrary distinction sprang from a peculiarity in the regulations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That agency soon thereafter proposed to modify its rules in order to eliminate this asymmetry in how the implied preemption defense worked to bar inadequate warning claims, but its effort ultimately failed, while lower courts have confronted some creative efforts to circumvent the special protection enjoyed by generic drug manufacturers. …

The Ironically Important Role Of Incidental Take Authorizations In Whale Conservation, Alexander Carbaugh-Rutland, Jessica Owley, Kenneth Broad

Articles

The late 1970s and early '80s saw a regime shift in wildlife protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). That shift may be impeding the recovery of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoise species) in ways that are yet underexplored. As enacted, the MMPA and ESA established a conservation framework designed to reduce, to the fullest extent possible, "takes" of protected species. Between 1978 and 1982, a series of amendments to both statutes introduced a complex web of incidental take authorizations designed to ensure Congress' initial push for wildlife conservation would not impede economic …

Socially Responsible Ai In The Gpt Era, Yussuf A. Aleem

SMU Law Review

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) showcase its rapid evolution and promise, with the potential to profoundly transform decision-making, self-expression, and even the practice of law. However, AI also presents formidable challenges, including the further entrenchment of societal inequalities, widespread labor disruption, and existential threats to humanity. Modern AI systems show early signs of general intelligence, enabling them to perform a wide range of tasks beyond those of chatbots in both virtual and physical environments. Despite industry assurances of responsible AI development, these technologies are easily exploited and often exhibit troubling behaviors that even their creators struggle to understand.

This …

Obituary For The Birth Certificate, Malinda L. Seymore

SMU Law Review

Have birth certificates outlived their usefulness? Birth certificates establish an individual’s name, identity, age, race, sex and gender, parental authority, and citizenship. In addition, the information collected at the time of birth and reflected on a long-form birth certificate provides data for public health policy, population statistics, internal migration, government planning, and resource allocation. Birth certificates are also the all-access pass to American life, necessary for many functions of modern life: registering a child in school, signing a child up for soccer, getting a driver’s license and passport, enlisting in the military, and applying for government benefits. All of this, …

The Future Of Frozen Embryos, Clare Ryan, Benjamin J. Mcmichael

SMU Law Review

he 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, which declared frozen embryos to be “children,” represents a significant shift in the legal treatment of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States. This Article examines the context, implications, and potential consequences of LePage for family law, tort law, and access to reproductive technologies. The Article analyzes how this shift could impact disputes over embryo disposition, establishment of legal parentage, and liability for fertility clinics. It also explores the decision’s relationship to broader debates about fetal personhood in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s …

The Neuroscience Of Evidentiary Rules: The Case Of The Present Sense Impression, Christopher S. Sundby

SMU Law Review

The Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) play a critical role in federal trials by determining what evidence the jury will be allowed to hear. Nonetheless, the rules are largely premised on untested psychological assumptions. The Present Sense Impression Rule (PSIR), for example, is an exception to the general ban against hearsay based on the assumptions that statements about contemporaneous events have fewer memory errors; are less likely to be lies; and, when they are lies, that listeners are better able to detect the lie than if the declarant has had time to prepare.

The rule, in other words, is based …

Ready Or Not: How Congressional Dysfunction And Loper Bright Enterprises V. Raimondo Will Shift U.S. Regulation Of Emerging Technologies To The Federal Bench, Michelle Benedetto Neitz

SMU Law Review

This Article is the first in legal academic literature to consider how the power shift generated by Congressional dysfunction and the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will affect emerging technology law. Power is moving toward the judicial branch of government— and away from the legislative and executive branches. As a result, federal courts will now take a leading role in the evolution of emerging technology law in the United States.

Unfortunately, the federal judiciary is not prepared for this new era. Drawing from the information processing theory, this Article explains why federal judges will be deciding …

Environmental Law—Relatively Impermanent Waters: The Need For State Regulation Of Isolated Wetlands In Arkansas After Sackett V. Environmental Protection Agency, Caroline E. O'Connor

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Property Law— Squaring The Mold Predicament With Arkansas Landlord-Tenant Law, Katherine James Clark

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Adopted Into Debt?, Grace Palcic

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

While adoption procedures differ from state to state, every state uses some variation of the best interest of the child standard to determine the outcome of an adoption proceeding. To gather information for the best interest determination, states have created the home study process to investigate prospective adoptive families. A home study allows social workers and/or private adoption agencies to look at the needs of the child, the ability of the parents to care for the child, the existing familial dynamics, the safety of the physical home, the perceived moral character and reputation of the parents, mental and physical health …

A Bloody Mess: Why Blood Plasma Donation Centers Are Not Public Accommodations Subject To Title Iii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Kevin D. Marshall

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Workplace Retaliation And The Intersection Of Protected Conduct And Job Performance, Chris Schmidt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Environmental Monitoring Plan: For Work To Be Performed: July 1, 2024, Through June 30, 2025, Tennessee. Department Of Environment And Conservation.

Environmental Monitoring Plans

The Tennessee Department of Enviornment and Conservation, Division of Remediation, Oak Ridge (TDEC DoR-OR), provides the annual Fiscal Year 2025 EMP for the period of July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. This report is submitted as a comprehensive plan for TDEC DoR-OR monitoring and assessment activities across the Oak Ridge Reservation, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, (ORR) in accordance with terms of both the Environmental Surveillance and Oversight Agreement (ESOA), as well as in support of activities being conducted under the Federal Facilities Agreement (FFA).

Into The Thick Of It: Using Antitrust Law To Trim Patent Thickets And Lower The Price Of Prescription Drugs, Nachtrieb, William

Santa Clara Law Review

What would you do if the only drug that could potentially save your lifeispricedsohighthatyouwouldfacefinancialruintopayforit? For many Americans, this dilemma is not a hypothetical but a reality. Those who decide to follow doctor’s orders and pay for their prescriptions sometimes face crushing financial burden. It is not a secret that the price of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States is crippling for many patients. Indeed, the high price of prescriptions is one of the few issues that has garnered bi-partisan concern, with both Joseph Biden and Donald Trump vowing to fight to lower costs. This Note identifies the practice of “patent …