The Myriad Genetics gene patenting saga has officially shaped international jurisprudence, with the Federal Court of Australia upholding the patents for BRCA1 and BRCA2. In Cancer Voices Australia v. Myriad Genetics, NSD643/2010, Federal Court of Australia (Sydney), the first Australian case to deal with the issue of gene patents, the Court took a similarly liberal […]
The Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC) and IP Osgoode are delighted to announce our 2013 Canadian writing challenge in intellectual property law. We are excited to be running our fifth annual writing challenge. Our goal is to further enhance thoughtful and well-researched intellectual property public policy scholarship and discussion. We encourage a broad range […]
The long battle in the American courts over Myriad Genetics’ patents of BRCA1 and BRCA2, the primary diagnostic genes for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer has been well-documented in the IPilogue (see coverage by Beatrice yesterday as well as previous posts here, here, and here). Now, Myriad is poised to defend their patents at the Supreme Court for a second time, with […]
Put this in your pipe and smoke it: The High Court of Australia recently ruled that the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act withstands constitutional scrutiny, in JT International SA v Commonwealth of Australia. Retailers and smokers will thus soon find themselves scrutinizing things as well, in order to distinguish between identical cigarette packages stripped of all branding and trade-marks.
The commitment to culture by our Francophone neighbours in Quebec has put their provincial government in the center of a legal battle with 6 major retailers.
Won’t somebody think of the children!? A New York federal court judge will. A copyright infringement lawsuit by multiple authors’ groups – including two Canadian ones – against Google and several universities for their HathiTrust Digital Library book scanning and digital distribution has been dismissed.
The extremely variable pricing of diamonds has made them a historically difficult and unstable commodity to trade. However, recent advents in diamond technology have been patented, and industry insiders such as Martin Rapaport have suggested that diamonds will become akin to gold from an economic standpoint.
In a time where the price for cable TV and Internet subscriptions seem to be ever-increasing, a bid for Astral Media Inc. by Bell Canda Enterprises Inc. (BCE) in March, 2012 for $3.38 billion has roused the concerns of a number competing corporations and consumer groups.
When Judy Mikovits had a ‘keystone’ scientific discovery widely discredited, resulting in the loss of her job, it is unlikely that she considered the state of the intellectual property laws governing the work that she performed for her former employer, the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI). However, in November 2011, following the initiation of civil action […]
In late March, The United States Supreme Court ordered the U.S Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit to reconsider Myriad Genetics’ existing patent on two genes associated with a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer, in light of the judgement rendered in Mayo Collaborative Services v Prometheus Labs (Prometheus). A unanimous Supreme Court […]