On January 27th, the Trump administration issued an order (the January 27th order) freezing all federal grants and loans, which would have cut billions of dollars of federal funding, largely to research universities....more
The incoming Trump administration has sent many signals that it intends to ramp up the Department of Defense’s use of nontraditional acquisition pathways to bridge the “Valley of Death” and bring innovative technologies to...more
As an essential component of the drug development process, human clinical trials assist in determining whether a given drug will serve its intended purpose, but patent applicants should consider disclosure of such trials in...more
The Situation: The National Institutes of Health ("NIH") proposed a new policy requiring entities that receive licenses from the NIH to certain taxpayer-funded inventions to submit Access Plans for ensuring broader patient...more
On March 20, 2024, The USPTO issued an alert, notifying practitioners that the USPTO had developed training materials for patent examiners regarding searching for prior art in FDA and NIH databases. ...more
In an appeal from the US Court of Federal Claims, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a determination that 35 U.S.C. § 202(c)(4), a provision of the Bayh-Dole Act, operates to provide a license to the...more
This week, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) alongside public and private sector collaborators launched the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot program. NAIRR seeks to advance AI...more
The Biden Administration recently announced a plan to leverage an old tool in a new way to try to reduce drug costs: exercising “march-in rights” under the Bayh-Dole Act for drugs that were supported by government funding. ...more
Thank you for reading the May 2022 issue of Sterne Kessler's MarkIt to Market® newsletter. This month, we discuss Spotify's exploration into NFTs, two new USPTO policies with practical implications for trademark applicants...more
When Anming Hu, an engineering professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (“UTK”) was indicted in February 2020 on charges related to his alleged failure to disclose ties to a state-run Chinese university, the case...more
China employs its Thousand Talents Program (“TTP”) to recruit overseas academic and scientific talent to work in China by promising research funding from the Chinese government and, occasionally, compensation. TTP has drawn...more
On August 4, 2020, a bipartisan coalition of over 30 attorneys general led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry sent a letter request to United States Health and Human...more
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads throughout the United States and Americans anxiously await the arrival of a vaccine, biotech companies are grappling with the uncertainty of patent protection for COVID related biomedical...more
Federal authorities have recently described the threat of economic espionage from foreign entities as one of the greatest threats to the economic vitality of the United States, and this has led to an increase in...more
It was reported recently that certain universities and medical research centers in the U.S. made adverse employment decisions against several Chinese-American scientists who were suspected of disclosing confidential...more
A new infertility technique, mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), has been used to create so called “three-parent” babies. MRT is used in cases when mothers carry genes for mitochondrial diseases. Similar to in vitro...more