Recent Articles

Farmed Atlantic Salmon Escaping into the Pacific Northwest

July 28, 2008 20:52

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. An estimated 3...

A Crash Course in Intellectual Property

July 28, 2008 12:15

In my professional life, I deal with intellectual property questions on a routine basis. As a property professor, and a biolaw scholar, patent (and sometimes copyright) issues are my bread and butter. But, recent events in my life have reminded me just how much there is that I don't know.My...

Affymetrix' Wings Gets SNPed

July 25, 2008 19:01

Sometimes a single nucleotide variant among the thousands that make up a typical gene can indicate significant abnormality in a patient. These needles in genomic haystacks, called "Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms", or "SNPs", can be not only medically useful, but also quite lucrative to medical...

Macfie, McCain, and McPrizes

June 27, 2008 21:30

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...

Biotechnology Goes Underground

June 20, 2008 18:02

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. New regulations...

Biotechnology's Unsettled Forecast

June 20, 2008 09:17

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...

The case for banana sex

June 20, 2008 04:24

The commercial banana is a sterile mutant that hasn't had sex for decades. Visit Jurisdynamics to read the compelling case for banana sex.

Social Contract On Drugs

June 19, 2008 07:45

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...

Reporting From BIO 2008

June 18, 2008 01:05

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.BioLaw will report on every...

Patently Immoral Genes

June 09, 2008 20:56

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. Even if a patent...