Innovation Law and Tech News 6

Gerke publishes co-authored article in New England Journal of Medicine

If 23andMe goes bankrupt, what happens to their millions of customers’ personal and genetic data?

Sara Gerke, Melissa B. Jacoby, and I. Glenn Cohen explore this issue in a new article published on March 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled “Bankruptcy, Genetic Information, and Privacy — Selling Personal Information.”

The data are not protected by HIPAA, the authors note. The U.S. has no comprehensive federal privacy laws (and handful of overlapping, conflicting state laws.) Sure, Congress could pass consumer protection laws, but “it has been difficult to get large-scale privacy reform through Congress.”

Indeed, as the authors note, 23andMe’s privacy statement “reserves the company’s right to transfer customers’ personal information in the event of a company sale or bankruptcy.”

Basically, Gerke, Jacoby, and Cohen argue, little is stopping this data (potentially 14 million consumers’ worth) from being sold to the highest bidder.

Conclusion: “We believe it’s time to reconsider how [genetic information] data are regulated.”

Read the full article at nejm.org.

Sara Gerke is an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law. Melissa B. Jacoby is a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I. Glenn Cohen is a Harvard Law professor and faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Forthcoming paper by Sherkow focuses on drug labels

A drug label is a vital piece of information in patent cases, but a series of recent decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have changed how the court assesses claims. In a forthcoming article in the Stanford Law Review, Professor Jacob Sherkow calls this new confusion over labels “infringement by label.” In the paper, Sherkow and his co-author examine unresolved questions in patent law and return pharmaceutical patent litigation to factual and doctrinal basis.

Read the full article on SSRN.

Sherkow talks about Myriad’s importance a decade later

Researchers work on lab projects with a syringe and vial.

Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. was a cultural phenomenon when the Supreme Court’s ruling was issued, with the outcome taking a place on the front-page of most major newspapers in the United States. Reflecting more than 10 years on from the decision, however, Professor Jacob Sherkow tells the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology that the Myriad decision ended up having little impact on biotechnology research.

Nature quotes Sherkow on researcher who treated her own cancer

Self-treatment is a risky and controversial choice, as detailed in a new Nature article about a cancer researcher who decided to do research and treat her own breast cancer. In the article, Professor Jacob Sherkow is quoted about the dangers of publishing this kind of work; his comments are also included in a story for Futurism.

Read both the Nature article and the Futurism article online.

Illinois LawCast: Get to know Bill Watson and Sara Gerke

In this episode, our newest faculty members, Bill Watson and Sara Gerke, sit down to discuss their path to Illinois Law, their specialties, and how they are enjoying their time at the College of Law thus far.

Listen online.
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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.

SSRN features Q&A with Gerke

Main Library at the University of Illinois in early fall.

Professor Sara Gerke was recently featured on the SSRN blog, discussing her extensive research. As part of their “Meet the Author” series, Gerke participated in a question and answer session covering her research on the ethical and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and big data for health care and health law in the United States and Europe. She shared some of her background and much about her research in the interview.

Read the full post on SSRN.

Sherkow presents before New York Intellectual Property Law Association

In September, Professor Jacob Sherkow delivered a presentation on the legal aspects of DNA sequencing cases to the New York Intellectual Property Law Association. His presentation, titled “Trade Secrets Committee Meeting: Litigating DNA Trade Secrecy,” covered whether DNA sequences are protectable by trade secrecy and if recent advances in DNA sequencing technology might destroy trade secrecy protection for certain kinds data. He reviewed the technology in the field and cases focused on DNA trade secrecy as well as provided practical suggestions for litigating DNA trade secrecy cases.

Gerke brings CLASSICA research to Illinois Law

New faculty member Sara Gerke has an extensive background in research prior to her time at Illinois Law and she has brought her work on CLASSICA with her to Champaign. CLASSICA is an EU-funded project examining cancer classification via AI technology across several clinics, surgical teams, and countries. Professor Gerke is one of the heads of the study of the legal and ethical implications raised by AI-assisted surgery as part of the project.

Learn more about CLASSICA.

Sherkow publishes new paper on Myriad decision

An open book at the College of Law library

A decade on from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., Professor Jacob Sherkow argues that what seemed like a political and cultural phenomenon has had a much narrower impact. Writing as the first author in a new paper published in Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Sherkow explains how the Myriad decision has had a modest impact on patents, largely hidden by other developments in science and law since the case was decided.

Read the full paper online.

BioSpace quotes Sherkow on CRISPR patent dispute

The patent battle over CRISPR-Cas9 technology has gone on for longer than a decade, but continues to wind its way through the courts. The global CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing market size is expected to grow to $14.65 billion by 2032, and Professor Jacob Sherkow told BioSpace that companies seeking to license the technology may be content to wait and see how the patent battle settles rather than rushing to pay now. “If you get that wrong, that is a lot of money you set on fire,” Sherkow said.

Read the full article online.