Patent Law Weblog
recent posts
- Moderna Settles Patent Litigation with Arbutus et al.
- USPTO and DOJ Statement of Interest in Collision Communications: Another Thumb on the Scale in Favor of NPE Patent Plaintiffs
- Oasis Tooling, Inc. v. Siemens Industry Software Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2026)
- Why AI Will Not Take Over the World
- BioNTech Sues Moderna over mRNA Vaccine Technology
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Category: Biotech/Pharma News
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By Donald Zuhn — As recently reported on Patent Docs, the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing last week on patent reform. According to reports earlier today (June 12, 2007) at internetnews.com and InfoWorld, five Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are now seeking to delay the Senate bill’s progress, saying the…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The emotionally-charged phrase "patenting life" has been used by Michael Crichton, Lori Andrews, and others to raise the temperature on the debate over whether biotechnology patents (usually involving isolated genes) should be banned or curtailed. Although absent from the bill introduced by Congressman Becerra (at right) – who…
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By Donald Zuhn — Last Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing on "Patent Reform: The Future of American Innovation." Testifying at the hearing were Jon W. Dudas, Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; Bruce G. Bernstein, Chief Intellectual Property and Licensing Officer…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The comparative effectiveness of two Genentech drugs, Lucentis® and Avastin®, for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is currently the subject of a study by the National Eye Institutes (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health. The reason: the cost of Avastin® treatment (an off-label use, since…
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By Christopher P. Singer — Last Thursday, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) published a white paper entitled: "The Myth of the Anticommons." The paper, authored by Dr. Ted Buckley (BIO Director of Economic Policy), asserts that there is a lack of any strong theoretical or empirical data which supports the theory of the…
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By Donald Zuhn — On Friday, Massachusetts-based GenomeQuest, Inc. announced via the GenomeQuest Blog that GenomeQuest® 4.0, the bioinformatics company’s new web-enabled application for genetic sequence data search and analysis, would soon be released. The new version of the application will allow subscribers to add their own sequence data and annotations to GenomeQuest’s…
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By Donald Zuhn — On Thursday, the California Healthcare Institute (CHI), an independent organization comprising more than 250 biomedical companies, academic and research institutions, and companies involved in supporting the biomedical community, released a white paper entitled "Impact of Patent Law Changes on Biomedical Investment and Innovation." The CHI white paper analyzes the…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — One of the many benefits touted by proponents of the Human Genome Project has been the prospect of personalized medicine, based on a determination of an individual’s entire genomic DNA sequence. The advantages of this information are expected to include an understanding about the status of disease propensity-associated…
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By Christopher P. Singer — In a May 29, 2007 press release, sanofi-aventis and UCB announced that the FDA approved Xyzal® (active ingredient: levocetirizine dihydrochloride) a once-daily prescription antihistamine for the relief of seasonal and perennial allergic rhinitis, as well as for the treatment of chronic idiopathic urticaria (hives) in adults and in…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — There are new developments in global drug pricing policy today, but while they are good news for sub-Saharan Africa they fall far short of addressing the overarching disaster facing Western drug companies in these disputes (see "Worldwide Drug Pricing Regime in Chaos"). In a move kindly described as…
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