Seminar - 2 hours. The course maps a rapidly changing area of patent law that directly affects hi-tech industries. Since 2010, the Supreme Court has pushed back against an established trend of increasingly broad interpretation of patentable subject matter, which had come to include business models and diagnostic methods in addition to genetic and software patenting. AMP v. Myriad Genetics (2013) determined that isolated genes no longer constitute patentable subject matter, while Alice Corp v. CLS Bank (2014), Mayo v. Prometheus Laboratories (2012), and Bilski v. Kappos (2010) have curtailed, respectively, the patent eligibility of software, medical diagnostic methods, and business models. This seminar takes an in-depth look at these recent cases, while also tracing the key cases behind genetic patenting (Diamond v. Chackrabarty (1980)), software (Diamond v. Diehr (1981)); business models (State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998)); diagnostic methods (LabCorp v. Metabolite (1999)), and others. Students who have not taken a course in Intellectual Property should contact the instructor prior to enrolling in this course. Class attendance and participation is mandatory.
Graduation Requirements: May meet Advanced Writing Requirement with the instructor's permission.Final Assessment: Paper