Law Commons^™

On Breaking Patents: Separating Strands Of Fact From Fiction Under Trips, Cynthia M. Ho

Cynthia M Ho

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of when compulsory licensing of patents is permissible as a matter of international law under the Agreement of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). Thailand’s recent compulsory licenses of patents on a variety of medications provide a convenient vehicle to analyze the limits of compulsory licensing under TRIPS. Thailand’s actions are unique; most countries hesitate to issue compulsory licenses in the wake of legal uncertainties regarding TRIPS requirements as well as political pressure. This article capitalizes on the many issues involved in Thailand’s licenses to provide an authoritative interpretation of the scope of …

New Paradigms For Protection Of Biodiversity, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

The most successful bioprospecting venture was established in 1989 in Costa Rica. Interestingly, the distinction of being a forerunner in exploiting bioprospecting goes to India. In 1979, a full decade before Costa Rica, India established the TBGRI (Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute) at Trivandrum.

Yet, the TBGRI venture with the Kani Tribes, which had the potential to become a beacon of bioprospecting success, is showcased as the exemplar of failure. In this era of trade regime, the following paper asserts, bioprospecting ventures are important tools for developing countries. Countries like India and organizations like the TBGRI should learn from …

Earth Jurisprudence: The Moral Value Of Nature, Judith E. Koons

Faculty Scholarship

As planetary environmental crises advance toward us like an enormous oil spill, the call of Earth Jurisprudence has arisen, suggesting that a shift is necessary in the way that we think about law, governance, and nature. A predicate to rethinking law, however, is to reconsider the moral status of nature. This article posits that, to preserve a healthy planet for future generations of human beings - and for Earth itself - it is necessary to recognize Earth as the center of the moral community. As an ethical endeavor, the article turns the question of the moral status of nature through …

Improving Access To Medicines Doesn't Have To Mean More Patents, Luigi Palombi

Luigi Palombi

Access to medicines presupposes that there are medicines to access, but the development of medicines, especially those needed to treat diseases that inflict the poor and the disadvantaged, are especially difficult to access because of the pharmaceutical industry’s paradigm of medicines being inextricably linked to patents; meaning, without patents there is no incentive to undertake the necessary R&D to develop new medicines. This paper argues that this is a lie; told by pharmaceutical executives and spread by well meaning scientists. Uncontested by policymakers in the 1960’s it has become a truth that threatens scientific progress, the development of appropriate medicines …

Patenting Part-Human Chimeras, Transgenics And Stem Cells For Transplantation In The United States, Canada, And Europe, Gregory R. Hagen, Sébastien A. Gittens

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The perceived need for part-human materials – considered to be biological materials containing human genetic material for the purposes of this paper – is at least twofold. First, given the continued shortage of human organs and other human biological materials suitable for transplantation, thousands of persons will suffer illness and death each year.

What Is An Invention? A Review Of The Literature On Patentable Subject Matter, Emir Aly Crowne Mohammed

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

This work is a critical review of the literature on patentable subject matter. It examines the central feature of modern patent law—the “invention”—at an international and comparative level. As with most codified terms intended to have wide-ranging, prospective applicability, it is usually left undefined, or if defined, is usually drafted broadly and permissively. Despite the hallmarks of patentability (namely, novelty, inventiveness, and industrial applicability), some courts1 and academic commentators have questioned whether there still needs to be an invention in the first place, before one even considers its patentability.

The New Chinese Dynasty: How The United States And International Intellectual Property Laws Are Failing To Protect Consumers And Investors From Counterfeiting, Anna-Liisa Jacobsen

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

As businesses expanded with the rise of globalization, so did the effects of anticompetitive activity and, in turn, the reach of the U.S. antitrust laws. Though Congress addressed the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the U.S. antitrust laws with its implementation of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvement Act (“FTAIA”), the statute only created a three-way circuit split that led the Supreme Court to address the issue and determine that the foreign injury must arise from both foreign anticompetitive activity and the activity’s adverse effects on domestic commerce. The D.C. Circuit further clarified the issue on remand by requiring a proximate cause relationship …

The Other Famous Marks Doctrine, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Debates on protection for famous trademarks often center around state and federal antidilution laws. Both the old Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 and the new Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 have generated many law review articles and numerous symposia. The dilution law focuses on trademarks deemed famous within U.S. boundaries. A debate on protection for famous trademarks today is incomplete without a discussion of the other famous marks doctrine. The other famous marks doctrine recognizes marks famous in other countries without actual use in the country where a user adopts the trademark on similar goods and services.

In …