Intellectual Property Law

Farmed Atlantic Salmon Escaping into the Pacific Northwest

Posted on July 09, 2008
Last week as many as 30,000 Atlantic salmon escaped from an aquaculture operation off the coast of British Columbia. This escape is among the largest in recent years and the likelihood of re-capturing more than 10% is low.Escapes from open-net cage salmon farms are not uncommon...

Macfie, McCain, and McPrizes

Posted on June 27, 2008
In late 19th Century Britain, a British Member of Parliament, Robert Macfie, vigorously advocated awarding governmental cash prizes to inventors whose inventions proved useful, and pressed for such a reward system to replace patents. Patents are usually justified on the grounds that they promote technological innovation...

The case for banana sex

Posted on June 20, 2008
The commercial banana is a sterile mutant that hasn't had sex for decades. Visit Jurisdynamics to read the compelling case for banana sex.

Biotechnology Goes Underground

Posted on June 20, 2008
Although advocates of comprehensive reform to the United States Patent Act have so far failed to shepherd any of their bills into statute, the next Congress is sure to take up the baton again. After all, the 2007 proposals actually passed the House before dying in the Senate...

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Biotechnology's Unsettled Forecast

Posted on June 20, 2008
The global biotechnology industry came within a whisker of profitability in 2007. In the 35 years since Boyer and Cohen first produced recombinant DNA, the industry as a whole has suffered staggering losses. That may change in 2008, a cause for cheer among the more than 20 000 biotechnology aficionados attending this year's BIO International Conference...

Social Contract On Drugs

Posted on June 19, 2008
Each year at BIO, Ernst & Young offer a numerically intensive update of the biotechnology industry, rich in charts, tables, graphs, pie charts, and Venn diagrams. However, this year's update managed several moments of philosophy as well. The most interesting involved several panel members discussing the "social contract" between the public and the bio/pharmaceutical industry...

Reporting From BIO 2008

Posted on June 17, 2008
BioLaw will be reporting live all week from the Biotechnology Industry Organization International Conference ("BIO 2008") in San Diego. BioLaw wishes to thank BIO 2008 for granting it official press status, and for providing excellent facilities in the Press Room...

Exhaustion Reinvigorated

Posted on June 09, 2008
Quanta Computer, Inc. ("Quanta"), has two reasons to celebrate today. First, the new G3 iPhones that it builds for Apple have gone public. Second, the United States Supreme Court finally released its decision in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc...

Supreme Court decides Quanta

Posted on June 09, 2008
The Supreme Court just handed down its decision in Quanta Computer Inc. v. LG Electronics Inc., 06-937. The Court ruled 9-0 in favor of Quanta ruling that method patents are subject to exhaustion, and that the patents had been exhausted in this case. The opinion is here...

The greatest story ever told

Posted on June 06, 2008
Hear the rhapsody in cyan that cyanobacteria composed in bridging the Archaean and Proterozoic eons of geologic history. By "poisoning" the ancient earth's atmosphere through photosynthesis, cyanobacteria converted the reducing atmosphere of the Archaean into the aerobic atmosphere that has prevailed ever since and has supported a wide range of oxygen-loving (or at least oxygen-tolerant) organisms...

Biolaw Conference 2.0 (November 13-14, 2008)

Posted on June 06, 2008
The second annual Biolaw Conference 2.0 will be held on November 13th and 14th, 2008, at the University of Kansas School of Law. Biolaw 2.0 is being organized by the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, and invited articles spanning the range of biolaw topics will be published in a special volume of the Journal...

New Front on the Evolution Wars

Posted on June 04, 2008
The phrase seems innocuous enough: "strengths and weaknesses." In fact those three words are the latest salvo of those who were previously thwarted from forcing their personal religious beliefs on unsuspecting science students by court decisions rejecting creationism, creation "science" and "intelligent" design...

Patently Immoral Genes

Posted on June 02, 2008
It is not uncommon for patent attorneys in the United States to console themselves, especially when suffering from the stress of long workdays and endless due dates, deadlines, and statutory bars, that at least their branch of legal practice avoids the minefields of morality...

Dealing with the Polar Bear

Posted on June 01, 2008
There has been a lot of hoopla and controversy focused on the Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) recent listing of the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The FWS is taking flak from all sides. Alaska, Canada, and many US industries argue that the agency used insufficient science to designate the bear as threatened, and that the listing will bring doom and gloom to our economies...

Cloning Around In Japan

Posted on May 30, 2008
Nature reports that Japan may soon authorize experimental human embryonic cloning. This would overturn a 2001 Japanese ban on such research. Human cloning will have to adhere to "rigorous ethical regulations", and human reproductive cloning will still be banned...

Remember the quagga

Posted on May 28, 2008
Olivia Judson, Musings inspired by a quagga, The New York Times: The Wild Side blog (May 27, 2008)The hall is hushed, like a church. No one else is here. The only sound is the clicking of the heels of my shoes. I walk up and down, looking at the animals...

The Double Helix

Posted on May 19, 2008
James Watson's memoir, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1st ed. 1969; reprint 2001), has been described by Sylvia Nasar as "unique in the annals of science writing." The Double Helix describes a "discovery ...

More on the Polar Bear Listing

Posted on May 16, 2008
Along with the decision to list polar bears (noted here, history here), DOI issued a 4(d) rule. Secretary Dirk Kempthorne?s comments announcing the listing decision also lay out its limits: it will ?not open the door to use the ESA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources? and the 4(d) rule ?will ensure the protection of the bear while allowing us to continue to develop our natural resources in the arctic region in an environmentally sound way...

Trouble in bear country

Posted on May 14, 2008
As rising temperatures change life on a global scale, we should not be surprised that Ursus maritimus, the eponymous bear of the far north, has now come under the aegis of the Endangered Species Act.Threatened

Ovarian Cancer Awareness

Posted on May 10, 2008
Among women in the United States, ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer, and fifth most common cause of cancer deaths. Although, far less common than breast, colon or prostate cancer, but ovarian cancer has a much higher death rate. Why? Because there is no screening test, and most women experience few symptoms until they have advanced stages of the disease...

The platypus genome

Posted on May 08, 2008
The platypus genome has been sequenced. Some of the cooler details:Sex determination. It has been known that platypuses have not one but five (!) pairs of sex chromosomes. Male platypuses exhibit an XYXYXYXYXY genotype. And those sex chromosomes bear some connection to the ZW sex determination system found in birds...

Symmetrical and sexy

Posted on May 07, 2008
Herewith a neat article, courtesy of the literature-scouring tool called The Scientific Lawyer and its systematic scouring of Science Daily:Anthony C. Little, Symmetry Is Related to Sexual Dimorphism in Faces: Data Across Culture and Species, PLoS ONE 3(5): e2106...

Rhapsodizing further on insects

Posted on May 06, 2008
Elaborating further on Rhapsody in iridescent blue: A quartet from "The Theater of Insects," in this weblog network's preferred variation on the theme of synesthesia:I. The Theater of Insects RevisitedImages from Jo Whaley, The Theater of Insects, © 2000-2007...

A regulatory train wreck

Posted on May 02, 2008
Polar bears face an increasingly uncertain future. (photo credit)The ProblemGlobal warming is changing the arctic ? reducing the coverage and availability of the ice on which polar bears depend. Richard Steiner, a marine biology professor at the University of Alaska, puts it a little more bluntly: For anyone who has wondered how global warming and reduced sea ice will affect polar bears, the answer is simple ? they die...

Rhapsody in iridescent blue: A quartet from "The Theater of Insects"

Posted on May 01, 2008
Images from Jo Whaley, The Theater of Insects, © 2007. Top — 47: Doxocopa cherubina and 8: Papilio ulysses. Bottom — 60: Anaea cyanae and 102: Morpho deidamia.From the introductory essay accompanying Jo Whaley's forthcoming book, The Theater of Insects (2008):Like moths attracted to the light of a flame only to perish in that flight, I wonder if we, too, are tied to self-destruction through a drive toward greater technological heights...

A predictable catastrophe

Posted on April 28, 2008
Today's Washington Post has an article on how the global food crisis is impacting Mauritania. Yesterday, I blogged about this topic on Intlawgrrls, here. The human scale of this tragedy can get buried under statistics about biofuel, farm animal production and global trade...

Dr. Lovejoy on Climate Change & Biodiversity

Posted on April 26, 2008
Last week, I added a brief blog post on my research into climate change and biodiversity, emphasizing forest preservation. This evening, I bumped into a video of Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy discussing similar issues a couple of years ago. Dr. Lovejoy has long been among the most important scientific voices on biodiversity and he has focused on the impact of climate change in recent years...

Toxic inaction, in humans and their pets

Posted on April 23, 2008
Mark Schapiro, Toxic InactionGreenpeace U.K. released a study in 2005 that found numerous toxic chemicals in the umbilical-cord blood of European infants. That same year, World Wildlife Fund International tested the blood of three generations of women from 12 European countries...

earth day thoughts

Posted on April 22, 2008
This is the Ganges River basin (photo by NASA). Isn't it beautiful? More satelite images of the earth can be found here.When the President of the United States pitches halting the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 as a "rational and balanced approach," let alone as a national commitment to sustainability, it is worth taking a moment to remind ourselves what a beautiful and yet fragile planet we call home...

Exploitation and Gardening

Posted on April 21, 2008
Paul Krugman has an op-ed piece in the NY Times called ?Running Out of Planet to Exploit.? The basic thrust is to question whether rising oil and food prices are a sign that the human population is hitting the proverbial brick wall in terms of resource exploitation...

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