On January 31, 2014, Fenwick & West and the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at George Mason University School of Law held a roundtable on Patentable Subject Matter at Fenwick’s Silicon Valley office.
Our approach to this roundtable was different from the typical conference or roundtable on patent eligibility. As I have made clear in other posts, the question of patent eligibility reaches outside of the strict confines of the courtroom, the Patent Office and the patent statute; it is intimately grounded in science and philosophy, in the nature of human creativity and in the types of things that can be said to be the subject of human creation. In particular, the fundamental questions of patent eligibility—what is a law of nature, an abstract idea, or a natural phenomena—are questions that are ancient in origin, and that have been addressed in considerable detail outside the boundaries of the law.
Accordingly, in addition to the usual suspects, such as law professors and patent practitioners, we included in our roundtable experts in a number of extra-judicial disciplines. Mark Turner, professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, is one of the leading theorists and researchers in studying the nature of human cognition, and one of the originators of the theory of Conceptual Blending, which describes how we combine abstractions from different domains to understand and imagine. Gregory Salmieri, visiting fellow in Philosophy at Boston University, provided insights on the historical and analytical issues underlying abstract ideas and laws of nature. Ted Brown, Emertius Professor of Chemistry at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed the role of metaphor in scientific thinking, and how chemists and physicists think about laws of nature. Steve Rosenberg, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at CardioDx, and an inventor on over 20 patents, brought his expertise in biochemistry and genetics to bear on these topics as well.
Our academic contingent included Adam Mossoff, Mark Schultz, Matthew Barblan, co-directors of CPIP; Kristin Osenga, professor of law at University of Richmond School of Law, with expertise in the role of linguistics in patent law; Christopher Holman, professor of law at University of Missouri-Kansas City, who has extensive experience in biochemistry and molecular biology; Andrew Chin, professor of law at the University of North Carolina, a specialist in the mathematical considerations under debate; and Saurabh Vishnubhakat, post-doctoral associate at Duke Law School and an expert advisor to the USPTO on patent policy.
Our practitioners included myself, Courtney Brinckerhoff, partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, an expert in biotechnology patent issues and James Calkins, Vice President and Global Head of Patent Support at Sanofi (and former clerk to J. Giles Rich of the Federal Circuit), who explained the impact that the uncertainty in patent eligibility has on investments by companies in biotech innovations.
We will publish a white paper on the roundtable shortly.
