Patent Trolling--Why Bio & Pharmaceuticals Are At Risk, Robin C. Feldman, W. Nicholson Price Ii
Dec 2013
Patent Trolling--Why Bio & Pharmaceuticals Are At Risk, Robin C. Feldman, W. Nicholson Price Ii
Robin C Feldman
Patent trolls — also known variously as non-practicing entities, patent assertion entities, and patent monetizers — are a top priority on legislative and regulatory reform agendas. In the modern debates, however, the biopharmaceutical industry goes conspicuously unmentioned. Although biopharmaceuticals are paradigmatically centered on patents, conventional wisdom holds that biopharmaceuticals are largely unthreatened by trolls. This article shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong, both theoretically and descriptively. In particular, the article presents a ground-breaking study of the life science holdings of 5 major universities to determine if these might be attractive to monetizers.
This was deliberately a light, rather than …
Whose Body Is It Anyway? Human Cells And The Strange Effects Of Property And Intellectual Property Law, Robin C. Feldman
May 2011
Whose Body Is It Anyway? Human Cells And The Strange Effects Of Property And Intellectual Property Law, Robin C. Feldman
Robin C Feldman
Whatever else I might own in this world, it would seem intuitively obvious that I own the cells of my body. Where else could the notion of ownership begin, other than with the components of the tangible corpus that all would recognize as "me?" The law, however, does not view the issue so neatly and clearly, particularly when cells are no long in your body. As so often happens in law, we have reached this point, not by design, but by the piecemeal development of disparate notions that, when gathered together, form a strange and disconcerting picture.
This article examines …
The Intellectual Property Landscape For Ips Cells, Robin C. Feldman
Dec 2009
The Intellectual Property Landscape For Ips Cells, Robin C. Feldman
Robin C Feldman
Beginning in 2006, induced pluripotent stem cells have raised the tantalizing possibility that stem cell research could move forward without the significant moral and ethical dilemmas that have paralyzed the field. These cells, known as iPS cells, originate from adult somatic cells, but function in a manner that is almost equivalent to embryonic stem cells. If iPS cell research lives up to its promise, stem cell research, diagnostics, and treatment could be accomplished without destroying or in any way interfering with human embryos or their development.
While we may be entering a historic moment in stem cell research, we are …
Open Source, Open Access, Open Transfer: Market Approaches To Research Bottlenecks, Robin C. Feldman
Apr 2008
Open Source, Open Access, Open Transfer: Market Approaches To Research Bottlenecks, Robin C. Feldman
Robin C Feldman
One of the most hotly contested issues in the field of intellectual property law concerns the existence, or non-existence, of patent thickets and the extent to which any such bottlenecks may be interfering with research. For decades, scholars warned that problems related to the over proliferation of patent rights would interfere with innovation. In contrast, a growing body of commentary argues that patent thickets are not a problem in modern industries. Either patent thickets do not exist, or if they do, patent thickets do not interfere with the progress of research.
The rhetoric is particularly heated these days because of …
