Seminar with Jorge Contreras

"The Genome Defense" – The Civil Rights Case Against Gene Patenting

Abstract

In 2013, the US Supreme Court held that naturally occurring genetic sequences may not be patented, instantly invalidating hundreds, if not thousands, of existing patents and opening the testing market for hereditary cancer and many other health conditions.  The case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, was remarkable in many ways, not least because it was prosecuted on behalf of twenty plaintiffs -- researchers, professional associations, medical practitioners and individual patients -- by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation as a case centered on individual civil rights rather than a technical interpretation of the U.S. Patent Act.  In The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), Professor Jorge Contreras brings this important case to life.  Through nearly 100 interviews with attorneys, advocates, judges, patients and government officials, Contreras peels back the layers of this unique episode in American legal history and explains not only what happened, but why and how, and what its implications are for the future of medical science. 

Registration 

Please register no later than the 13 March 2023 at 10:00 using this registration form

Bio

Jorge Contreras is the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah School of Medicine. During 2023 he is also serving as a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Contreras’s research focuses on intellectual property, technical standards, antitrust law and science policy. He is the editor or author of twelve books and more than 150 scholarly articles and book chapters.  During his career he has served on the NIH Council of Councils and the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. He was one of the co-founders of the Open COVID Pledge, a framework for contributing intellectual property to the COVID-19 response and sits on the World Health Organization’s Advisory Council for the Covid Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). Professor Contreras’s recent book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Algonquin, 2021), which has received praise from outlets from the New York Times and Wall St. Journal to Nature and STAT, describes the landmark civil rights litigation that ended gene patenting in America.  He is a graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BSEE, BA), and an elected member of the American Law Institute.