American patent law has reached an unprecedented crossroads, prodded by a landmark Supreme Court decision this spring and the prospect of sweeping new federal legislation this fall. At this critical time, Biotechnology and the Patent System: Balancing Innovation and Property Rights provides a timely look at the complex issues involved in making patent law for cutting-edge high-tech industries such as the biotechnology and computer software sectors.
'The art of editing is to bring contributions together, which melt into one book. This is what Emanuela Arezzo and Gustavo Ghidini have achieved with their own critical mind by composing a book of papers, in which internationally renowned experts measure the tensions created for the patent system by the needs and problems of protecting biotechnological and software inventions. All together, they present a comparative law challenge to the very fundaments of patent protection. As such, they are or may become a "must read".' Hanns Ullrich, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium 'Arezzo and Ghidini have put together a fine collection of essays addressing developments in patent law from general themes to emerging ones in the infotech and biotech sectors. It is notable that the international array of authors includes contributions from both established and rising young scholars, all of them ably tackling difficult issues that merit our attention.' Rudolph J.R. Peritz, New York Law School, US The new millennium has carried several challenges for patent law. This up-to-date book provides readers with an important overview of the most critical issues patent law is still facing today at the beginning of the twenty first century, on both sides of the Atlantic. New technological sectors have emerged, each one with its own features with regard to innovation process and pace. From the most controversial cases in biotech to the most recent decisions in the field of software and business methods patent, patent law has tried to stretch its boundaries in a way to accommodate such new and controversial subject matters into its realm. Biotechnology and Software Patent Law will strongly appeal to postgraduate students specializing in IP law, international law, commercial and business law, competition law as well as IP scholars, academics and lawyers.
The U.S. patent system is in an accelerating race with human ingenuity and investments in innovation. In many respects the system has responded with admirable flexibility, but the strain of continual technological change and the greater importance ascribed to patents in a knowledge economy are exposing weaknesses including questionable patent quality, rising transaction costs, impediments to the dissemination of information through patents, and international inconsistencies. A panel including a mix of legal expertise, economists, technologists, and university and corporate officials recommends significant changes in the way the patent system operates. A Patent System for the 21st Century urges creation of a mechanism for post-grant challenges to newly issued patents, reinvigoration of the non-obviousness standard to quality for a patent, strengthening of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, simplified and less costly litigation, harmonization of the U.S., European, and Japanese examination process, and protection of some research from patent infringement liability.
Patents protecting biotechnological invention are becoming ever more important. Because biotechnology has many differences with respect to other technologies, lessons learned in other fields of technology cannot simply be transferred to adopt a suitable strategy for dealing with biotechnology inventions. In this volume, general aspects of biopatent law will be discussed. This involves questions of patentability, including ethical issues and issues of technicality, as well as questions of patent exhaustion in cases were reproducible subject matter, like cells or seeds, is protected. Moreover, active and passive patent strategies are addressed. Further, insight will be given into patent lifetime management and additional protective measures, like supplementary protection certificates and data exclusivity. Here, strategies are discussed how market exclusivity can be extended as long as possible, which is particularly important for biopharmaceutical drugs, which create high R&D costs.
Pharmaceutical and Biotech Patent Law provides you with the legal, scientific, and technical information you need to help clients obtain, defend, and challenge patents in these important business areas. This practical guide shows you how to craft problem-free patent applications, including how to partner with the government to bring patented inventions quickly to the marketplace - invalidate competitors' patents by proving that they fail to meet key requirements - protect against various forms of patent infringement - and successfully rebut charges of infringement. It includes detailed checklists that help you resolve thorny patent problems in the complex pharmaceutical and biotech fields, and is regularly updated to reflect Federal Circuit rulings and other significant court decisions.
Advances in modern biotechnology have produced profound and far-reaching implications for the relationship between humans, animals and the environment. As a result, a debate has arisen surrounding the legal, moral and social problems connected with this technology, a central part of the debate focusing on the role of moral considerations in the patent system as a form of regulation. This fully revised and updated book examines this role and asks why in the context of biotechnological inventions, morality has become an important issue. It takes account of recent developments, including reference to the situation in Australia. By examining such specific recent cases, the author elucidates the moral concerns associated with modern biotechnology, thus providing an important contribution to the debate and a valuable resource for all those working in this exciting field.
The patenting and licensing of human genetic material and proteins represents an extension of intellectual property (IP) rights to naturally occurring biological material and scientific information, much of it well upstream of drugs and other disease therapies. This report concludes that IP restrictions rarely impose significant burdens on biomedical research, but there are reasons to be apprehensive about their future impact on scientific advances in this area. The report recommends 13 actions that policy-makers, courts, universities, and health and patent officials should take to prevent the increasingly complex web of IP protections from getting in the way of potential breakthroughs in genomic and proteomic research. It endorses the National Institutes of Health guidelines for technology licensing, data sharing, and research material exchanges and says that oversight of compliance should be strengthened. It recommends enactment of a statutory exception from infringement liability for research on a patented invention and raising the bar somewhat to qualify for a patent on upstream research discoveries in biotechnology. With respect to genetic diagnostic tests to detect patient mutations associated with certain diseases, the report urges patent holders to allow others to perform the tests for purposes of verifying the results.
Previous editions, 1st and 2nd, published under titles : 1st (1982) Patents for chemists ; 2nd (1986) Patents in chemistry and biotechnology ; 3rd edition published in 1999.
Introduction -- Defining the public interest in the US and European patent systems -- Confronting the questions of life-form patentability -- Commodification, animal dignity, and patent-system publics -- Forging new patent politics through the human embryonic stem cell debates -- Human genes, plants, and the distributive implications of patents -- Conclusion
