Highlights of Recent Scholarship

Articles and Chapters in Print

Professor Dana Beldiman has published “Patent Choke Points in the Influenza-Related Medicines Industry:  Can Patent Pools Provide Balanced Access” in the Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property. The article examines the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework and proposes an alternate approach in the form of a patent pool or comparable cross licensing agreement to overcome “anti-commons” and related problems.

Professor Richard Marcus has published “Still Confronting the Consolidation Conundrum” in the Notre Dame Law Review. The article offers some ruminations about how controversies in aggregate litigation have evolved since 1995, and why we are still confronting the consolidation conundrum.

Professor Marcus has also published “Extremism in the Pursuit of Truth is Our ‘Virtue’: The American Infatuation with Broad Discovery” in Truth and Efficiency in Civil Litigation: Fundamental Aspects of Fact-finding and Evidence-taking in a Comparative Context (2012). His chapter notes that American discovery rules have emphasized “proportionality” for more than a generation and argues that, particularly in view of the American reliance on private enforcement of public laws through litigation, the level of discovery is generally fairly efficient.

Forthcoming

Professor Ben Depoorter’s article “Copyright False Positives” will appear in the Notre Dame Law Review.

Professor Jennifer Dunn has two articles forthcoming. “After the Choice: Challenging California’s Physician-Only Abortion Restriction Under the State Constitution” has been accepted for publication in UCLA Law Review Discourse, and “A Survey of Access to Trial of Labor in California Hospitals in 2012” in the peer-reviewed publication Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Professor Rory Little’s “Annual Review of the Supreme Court’s Term, Criminal Cases” will be published next month as the first chapter in the ABA’s annual book State of Criminal Justice.

Speaking

On February 8, Professor Morris Ratner discussed “Legal Ethics and Transnational Litigation” at a conference on Lessons from Chevron at Stanford Law School

On February 13, Professor Robin Feldman presented her paper “Intellectual Property Wrongs” to the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology at Stanford Law School.   

On February 14, Professor Feldman spoke at Stanford Law School for the Stanford BioLaw and Health Policy Society on the topic of gene patenting.

On February 20, Professor Feldman moderated a symposium for the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly titled, “Patent Pending: Corporations, the Constitution, and the Human Gene.” The symposium consisted of a question and answer panel featuring Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit.

On February 27, Professor Feldman spoke at Yale Law School for the Yale Information Society Project. She presented her paper “Intellectual Property Wrongs.” 

On March 1, Professor William Dodge spoke about “Understanding the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality after Morrison v. National Australia Bank” at a symposium on Transnational Securities and Regulatory Litigation at McGeorge School of Law.

On March 8, Professor Radhika Rao spoke on “21st Century Reproductive Rights Issues” at a conference on Roe at 40: What We Have Learned, hosted by the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

On March 11, Professor Dodge delivered the 2013 Distinguished Global Law Lecture at Lewis & Clark Law School on the subject “International Comity in American Courts.”

Other Evidence of Engaged Scholarship

Professor Robin Feldman’s book “Rethinking Patent Law” was the subject of a sponsored, on-line discussion by the Canadian counterpart of the US Patent & Trademark Office, to inform their patent examiners, policy analysts, and attorneys. The discussion concluded by saying that, “Although Feldman’s book only looks at the American patent system, her argument remains just as relevant to the Canadian reader as it is to an American one.” 

Professor Jeffrey Lefstin filed an amicus brief in support of respondents in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., which the Supreme Court will hear next month. (He also argued the other side at a mock argument for the San Francisco Intellectual Property Inn of Court on February 20.) The brief argues that isolated and purified DNA molecules derived from human genes are patentable—a decision is expected in June!