One of the signal public health achievements/victories of the 20th Century is the eradication of smallpox (variola virus, VARV) announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980; it has been estimated that smallpox...more
As the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life throughout the world this spring, bats have been a prominent feature in news stories and recriminations about how the pandemic started (and being blamed even more than happenings in...more
The domesticated chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, is the most numerous domestic animal and a preferred source of animal protein. Chicken domestication has been thought (based on traditional measures) to have arisen in the...more
Genetic instability has long been recognized as a hallmark of oncogenesis and tumor progression. The phenomenon was first identified cytogenetically, most famously by the Philadelphia chromosome in chronic myelogenous...more
There is little rhyme nor reason in the cases the Supreme Court decides to review. But the Court has patterns in its case selection that do (to some degree) probe what the Justices think are important questions. One pattern...more
6/25/2020
/ America Invents Act ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Denial of Certiorari ,
Fifth Amendment ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Life Sciences ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Post-Grant Review ,
Retroactive Application ,
SCOTUS ,
Takings Clause
Measured by global dispersal alone, the common house mouse (Mus musculus ssp.) is the most successful invasive mammalian species. Perhaps surprisingly, the origin and history of this dispersal in the Western world has not be...more
The inherent, ineluctable unpredictability of biology can be the basis for biological patent claims being non-obvious (lacking the requisite "reasonable expectation of success"; see, e.g., OSI Pharmaceuticals v. Apotex) and...more
Lions (Panthera leo) once were a widely distributed group of terrestrial mammals, ranging during the Pleistocene (from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago) in Eurasia, Africa, and North America, with species that included the...more
The human tendency to identify with tribes of "like" humans (related by family, place of origin, or religion, among other bases) was perverted during the Twentieth Century (and in some places remains so today) into the idea...more
Gregor Mendel's great good fortune (or extraordinary prescience) was that he chose for the traits he used to illustrate the genetic control of inheritance (despite having no inkling of its mechanism) traits in his pea plants...more
On April 20th, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) set oral argument in Interference No. 106,155, between Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively,...more
5/5/2020
/ Court Schedules ,
CRISPR ,
DNA ,
Interference Claims ,
Life Sciences ,
Oral Argument ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Public Hearing ,
Teleconferences
On March 23rd, Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively, "Broad") filed its Reply to Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University...more
The latest installment in the cat-and-mouse game of deciding priority in Interference No 106,155 between Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively,...more
4/18/2020
/ CRISPR ,
Cross Examination ,
Expert Testimony ,
Hearsay ,
Hearsay Exceptions ,
Inadmissible Evidence ,
Interference Claims ,
Life Sciences ,
Motion to Exclude ,
Objections ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Prior Art
March 23rd was a busy day at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) regarding Interference No. 106,115 between Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...more
4/15/2020
/ CRISPR ,
DNA ,
Expert Witness ,
Genetic Testing ,
Interference Claims ,
Life Sciences ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Petitioner Reply Briefs ,
Priority Rules ,
Universities
Patent law (and, consequently, patent lawyers) can be viewed as having at least a slightly tighter tether on concrete, factual reality than other areas of the law, at least to the extent that making patent-related legal...more
The latest Federal Circuit decision on subject matter eligibility in the life sciences came down (by a divided court) in favor of eligibility, in Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. The claims at issue fell into the...more
3/20/2020
/ Appeals ,
CLS Bank v Alice Corp ,
Life Sciences ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Myriad ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Popular ,
Product of Nature Doctrine ,
Reversal ,
Section 101
On January 9th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") filed its motion in opposition to Senior Party the Broad Institute (joined by...more
The prevailing attitude in many quarters is that the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) has not facilitated approval of drugs biosimilar to reference biologic drug products with sufficient alacrity and has...more
2/19/2020
/ Biologics ,
Biosimilars ,
BPCIA ,
Competition ,
EU ,
FDA Approval ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Joint Statements ,
Legislative Agendas ,
Life Sciences ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Prescription Drugs
Ever since the Supreme Court's decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories was handed down in 2012, diagnostic method claims have been routinely invalidated by the district courts and those decisions...more
2/13/2020
/ Appeals ,
Diagnostic Method ,
Dissenting Opinions ,
Life Sciences ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Product of Nature Doctrine ,
Section 101
On January 9th, Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") filed a Motion in Opposition to Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard...more
2/11/2020
/ CRISPR ,
Evidence ,
Interference Claims ,
Life Sciences ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Oppositions ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Rebuttable Presumptions ,
Universities
Continuing explication of the motions submitted on January 9th to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Interference No. 106155 between Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and...more
"Everything you say can be held against you" is a trope in crime shows from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland (stated in various ways), and a recent decision by the Federal Circuit regarding preclusion of...more
Left-handedness is a uniquely human trait, with 90% human populations globally being right-handed since the Paleolithic (extending from 3.3 million years ago to the end of the Pleistocene). A feature of motor control, the...more
One of the wonders and satisfactions of modern science has been the elucidation (usually based in genetics) of the wonders of nature that have been famously observed but not explained until the proper tools (again, usually...more
On Tuesday, August 20, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent No. 10,385,360 to the University of California/Berkeley, directed to an aspect of its CRISPR technology (where CRISPR is an acronym for...more