Technology Transfer and the Genome Project: Problems with Patenting Research Tools

Professor Eisenberg argues against a system providing for federally-sponsored inventions to be patented if any associated person so desires. She believes that the system does not adequately weigh the possibility that the greatest social return from genome research will require some discoveries to be in the public domain

Harnessing and Sharing the Benefits of State Sponsored Research

In recent years data-sharing has been a recurring focus of struggle within the scientific research community as improvements in information technology and digital networks have expanded the ways that data can be produced, disseminated, and used. Information technology makes it easier to share data in publicly accessible archives that aggregate data from multiple sources. Such sharing and aggregation facilitate observations that would otherwise be impossible. But data disclosure poses a dilemma for scientists. Data have long been the stock in trade of working scientists, lending credibility to their claims while highlighting new questions that are worthy of future research funding. Some disclosure is necessary in order to claim these benefits, but data disclosure may also benefit one\u27s research competitors. Scientists who share their data promptly and freely may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage relative to free riders in the race to make future observations and thereby to earn further recognition and funding. The possibility of commercial gain further raises the competitive stakes. This article discusses data sharing in California\u27s stem cell initiative against the background of other data sharing efforts and in light of the competing interests that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is directed to balance. We begin by considering how IP law affects data-sharing. We then assess the strategic considerations that guide the IP and data policies and strategies of federal, state, and private research sponsors. With this background, we discuss four specific sets of issues that public sponsors of data-rich research, including CIRM, are likely to confront: (1) how to motivate researchers to contribute data; (2) who may have access to the data and on what conditions; (3) what data get deposited and when do they get deposited; and (4) how to establish database architecture and curate and maintain the database

The Government as Litigant: Further Tests of the Case Selection Model

We develop a model of the plaintiff's decision to file a law suit that has implications for how differences between the federal government and private litigants and litigation translate into differences in trial rates and plaintiff win rates at trial. Our case selection model generates a set of predictions for relative trial rates and plaintiff win rates depending on the type of case and whether the government is defendant or plaintiff. In order to test the model, we use data on about 350,000 cases filed in federal district court between 1979 and 1997 in the areas of personal injury and job discrimination where the federal government and private parties work under roughly similar legal rules. We find broad support for the predictions of the model.

A Model of Electrodiffusion and Osmotic Water Flow and its Energetic Structure

We introduce a model for ionic electrodiffusion and osmotic water flow through cells and tissues. The model consists of a system of partial differential equations for ionic concentration and fluid flow with interface conditions at deforming membrane boundaries. The model satisfies a natural energy equality, in which the sum of the entropic, elastic and electrostatic free energies are dissipated through viscous, electrodiffusive and osmotic flows. We discuss limiting models when certain dimensionless parameters are small. Finally, we develop a numerical scheme for the one-dimensional case and present some simple applications of our model to cell volume control