[IP Hot Topics Podcast] Innovation Conversations: Walter Isaacson, Part 1
Clinton: SCOTUS Myriad Genetics Decision 'Terrific'
Can You Patent Human Genes? ACLU Says No
Yours, Mine and Ours (not yet!): An Update on the Patentability of Human Genes
Key Points: Illumina DNA sequencing machines are vulnerable to exploitation. Both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have published advisories urging all...more
Amazon Sued for Not Telling New York Store Customers about Tracking Biometrics - “Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require businesses to post signs letting customers know they’re tracking...more
China is considering new export restrictions on advanced technologies, including, in particular, in the life sciences sectors. In late December 2022, China’s Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) issued the proposed amendment to...more
Gene therapy aims to treat the underlying genetic cause of a disease rather than only the symptoms. It involves the delivery of properly functioning DNA into a patient’s genetic material to correct an underlying genetic...more
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) is a form of intellectual property protection administered through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for new varieties of plants....more
The investments in Advanced Medicinal Products (ATMPs) that use gene therapy, somatic cell therapy, and engineered tissues for preventing, treating, or curing human diseases probably represent the biggest innovation in the...more
An international cadre of scientists* from almost 70 institutions worldwide recently reported their findings in the scientific journal Nature that the domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) arose from two populations of...more
The Ministry of Science and Technology of China has finally issued the draft of Implementation Rules for the Regulations of Human Genetic Resources Administration for public comments on March 21, 2022, which gives more...more
Data Breach Corner - Cash App Data Breach Affects More than 8M Users - "A former employee of the company downloaded reports containing the personal information of U.S. users." Why this is important: Not all data...more
2021 was a fascinating year in biotech, especially for legal issues. Of course, 2021, as the second year of a global pandemic, must be viewed in context with 2020....more
The domestic cat has been the subject of much study, recently involving its genetic structure, genomic DNA sequence, and comparisons with other felines. The first such study was published in 2014, when an international...more
The advent of technology making feasible elucidation of whole genomic sequencing over the past 30 years has led to reports of many if not most important or interesting animal genomes (including the most celebrated results of...more
Two articles (Newsweek and Fierce Biotech) describe the new lawsuit by the Henrietta Lacks Estate surrounding the HeLa cell line. The claim is "unjust enrichment," a difficult claim to win, but one that seems to fit this...more
Caribou Biosciences, Inc., a Berkeley, California-based CRISPR genome-editing biopharmaceutical company, raised $304M in an initial public offering, one of the most lucrative IPOs in gene-editing. In June 2021, Gene editing...more
On July 13, 2021, Prime Medicine, a Massachusetts biotech company developing next generation gene editing technology, emerged from stealth mode with $315 million in financing. The financing includes a $115 million Series A...more
Cephalopods are fascinating creatures, and their primary living representative -- the octopus -- has recently been the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary "My Octopus Teacher." They are clearly intelligent (as...more
The domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) has been the subject of many genetic studies, particularly since the dawning of the age of Whole Genome Sequencing in the late 20th Century. These studies have elucidated some...more
In a time of a global pandemic, with antivaxxer and anti-science sentiments running rife, and when combinations of fear, distrust, and paranoia are rampant, it is easy for important results from basic science to become fodder...more
The humble peach has been the inspiration for pies, album titles, independent movies, and a fictional woman's baseball team, but is also an important food species, yielding 24.5 million tons globally in 2018. Like all plant...more
The giraffe is the tallest extant terrestrial animal, and its iconic long neck (6 feet) provides advantages for foraging for food and detecting predators on the veldt over long distances. As a consequence, however, the...more
On March 25, the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in In re Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ., No. 2020-1288 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 25, 2021), affirming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s rejection of the...more
When it comes to SARS-CoV-2 infection (and resulting COVID-19), it seems our Neanderthal ancestors giveth and taketh away. Genetic material inherited from interbreeding between Neanderthals and early humans has been shown to...more
A promising new technology may make the diagnosis of cancer and genetic mutation testing as easy as performing a urinalysis as part of an annual physical exam. Cancer could be detected at its earliest stages, when treatment...more
The wooly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an iconic animal, like the saber tooth tiger or dire wolf, from a time in human history when our position at the top of the global food chain was decidedly not assured (and being...more
The dire wolf (Canis dirus), prototype of the various wolves that were important members of the House Stark family of characters in Game of Thrones, was found uniquely in North America until its extinction in the late...more