The European Parliament has adopted an amended European Commission proposal to regulate plants engineered using techniques such as CRISPR/Cas and ban any patenting of plants, plant parts, material, genetic information, or...more
The ability to edit eukaryotic DNA entails an almost limitless ability to alter the genetic makeup of the plants that become our food. Recently, scientific attention has been directed to applying a class of new gene-editing...more
Both U.S. practitioners and their European colleagues will be concerned about a dictum in In re Roslin Institute (Edinburgh), 750 F.3d 1333, 1338-39 (Fed. Cir. 2014) that any existing [micro]organism found in the wild is not...more
With the new year underway, we take a look back at some of the intellectual property-related highlights of 2013. Not only did the federal copyright and trademark agencies face a full-blown government shutdown this past year,...more
Recently, a group of 73 organic and conventional farmers, seed businesses, and public advocacy groups petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit’s decision that the petitioners lack standing to pursue their...more
Following the issuance of decision G2/07 in connection with the "Broccoli" patent, which discussed whether plant breeding methods were excluded from patentability as essentially biological processes for the production of...more
On October 5, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the issue of whether the Federal Circuit erred by (1) refusing to find patent exhaustion that eliminates the right to control or prohibit the use of an invention...more