Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 164: Emily Chee, US General Manager of Novartis Gene Therapies
Yours, Mine and Ours (not yet!): An Update on the Patentability of Human Genes -
Agribusiness is currently experiencing both a technological revolution and a corresponding increase in intellectual property uncertainty and disputes. Originally published in Law360 - October 26, 2023....more
Summary - Last year the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), under a threat of a vote, accelerated negotiations on an international legal instrument related to intellectual property (IP) and genetic resources...more
An international cadre of scientists* from almost 70 institutions worldwide recently reported their findings in the scientific journal Nature that the domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) arose from two populations of...more
2021 was a fascinating year in biotech, especially for legal issues. Of course, 2021, as the second year of a global pandemic, must be viewed in context with 2020....more
Cephalopods are fascinating creatures, and their primary living representative -- the octopus -- has recently been the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary "My Octopus Teacher." They are clearly intelligent (as...more
On March 25, the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in In re Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ., No. 2020-1288 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 25, 2021), affirming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s rejection of the...more
When it comes to SARS-CoV-2 infection (and resulting COVID-19), it seems our Neanderthal ancestors giveth and taketh away. Genetic material inherited from interbreeding between Neanderthals and early humans has been shown to...more
The wooly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an iconic animal, like the saber tooth tiger or dire wolf, from a time in human history when our position at the top of the global food chain was decidedly not assured (and being...more
In 2017, New Jersey based biotech startup Modern Meadow launched Zoa, which it considers “[t]he world’s first bioleather materials brand.” Zoa, a name derived from the Greek term for life, zoi, features products created with...more
It was recently reported that China had successfully cloned a 12-year old schnauzer — the most recent of over 20 dog breeds successfully cloned by the nation so far. "Doudou" the schnauzer was cloned through somatic cell...more
This September in New York, UN member states will begin to negotiate a new, binding international instrument to govern the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction....more
Two years ago today, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (“Protocol”) entered into international...more
Just over one year after the Full Federal Court of Australia unanimously upheld an earlier Federal Court decision that naturally occurring nucleic acid molecules are patentable in Australia, the High Court of Australia has...more
Colleagues in Australia have been spreading the bad news: The High Court of Australia followed the lead (?) of the U.S. Supreme Court and determined that Myriad cannot patent the isolated BRCA1 gene in Australia. Thanks to...more
Yesterday, we reported on a session of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) Intellectual Property Counsel's Committee fall conference, which took place earlier this week in Nashville, TN, in which the U.S. Patent and...more
During a session of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) Intellectual Property Counsels Committee (IPCC) fall conference, which took place this week in Nashville, TN, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office provided a...more
On March 4, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a guidance memorandum, entitled "Guidance For Determining Subject Matter Eligibility Of Claims Reciting Or Involving Laws of Nature, Natural Phenomena, & Natural...more
The Supreme Court decision last year on June 13, 2013 in Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics may have been a watershed moment for the biotechnology industry. So far the effects have been hard to detect, but...more
In Institut Pasteur v. Focarino, the Federal Circuit found that the obviousness determination by the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences was not supported by substantial evidence, and rested on an “erroneous...more
Reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its seventh annual list of top biotech/pharma patent stories. For 2013, we identified fourteen stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year...more
In one of the first district court decisions applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s new Myriad patent-eligibility standard, the Northern District of California held that diagnostic claims containing only conventional and existing...more
A patent issued to 23andMe, Inc. last month has created some controversy, and in response, the biotech company, based in Mountain View, California, has posted its side of the story on the 23andMe blog. The patent, U.S....more
As reported in my July 8, 2013 post, Consumer Watchdog (formerly known as The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights) and the Public Patent Foundation (collectively “CW”) asked the Federal Circuit to determine if in...more
The Supreme Court, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), has in recent years focused the requirements for pleadings under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure...more
In a paper published in March in the journal Genome Medicine, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld of the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and Dr. Christopher Mason of Cornell University contended that due to the...more