Law Commons^™

Fighting Against Biopiracy: Does The Obligation To Disclose In Patent Applications Truly Help?, Jacques De Werra

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In the global fight against biopiracy, one of the key issues is to prevent the grant and exploitation of patents on traditional knowledge and genetic resources by requiring that patent applicants for inventions involving traditional knowledge and genetic resources disclose the source of those resources and provide evidence that the prior informed consent of the local owners of such resources has been obtained and that benefit-sharing agreements have been entered into with those owners.

This Article argues that a legal discussion of biopiracy should analyze the obligation to disclose the use of traditional knowledge and genetic resources in an invention …

Patenting Games: Baker V. Selden Revisited, Shubha Ghosh

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Patents are meant to protect the functional aspects of an invention. But patents, particularly patents on processes or methods, can cover non-functional, or expressive, activity. This Article explores this possibility in the context of patents covering games of various types. Patents on games can cover the actual play or use of a game with consequent implications for user-generated content produced by playing games. The Article documents this possibility in the area of fantasy sports and video games and proposes two solutions. The first solution relies on the Federal Circuit's recent decision in In "re Bilski," which restricts the patenting of …