The year 2007 was an extraordinary year for the US Patent System. In a response to far reaching proposals for significant changes in substantive and procedural patent law the House of Representatives adopted the 2007 Patent Reform Act in September heating up the debates over crucial issues that...

Recent EU initiatives and legislations have considerably increased public access to clinical trials data (CTD). These developments are generally much welcomed for the enhancement of science, trust, and open innovation. However, they also raise many questions and concerns, not least at the...

The relevance of big data is not limited to applications in the information technology sector but extends to other important technological fields, such as the increasingly data-driven health and life sciences. Timo Minssen and Jens Schovsbo introduce some of the challenges resulting from the...

Research and innovation are key pillars of the EU’s strategy to create sustainable growth and prosperity in Europe. Research infrastructures (RIs) are central instruments to implement this strategy. They bring together a wide diversity of expertise and interests to look for solutions to many...

Whether the E.U. Trade Secrets Directive sufficiently and appropriately covers cutting-edge complex technologies is of critical interest to policy-makers, scientists, and commercial developers alike. One such technology — adaptive immune receptor repertoire sequencing, or AIRR-seq — raises...

On 25 March 2015, the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EBA) finally delivered its’ much awaited decisions on the consolidated referrals G2/12 (“Tomato II”) and G2/13 (“Broccoli II”). The EBA affirmed that products, namely plants or parts thereof, obtained by...