Fenwick & West Symposium 2013 pt 1 -- Welcome and Keynote

Welcome Vik Amar, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, UC Davis School of Law Robert Hulse, Partner, Fenwick & West Opening Keynote David Kappos, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Former Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office From biotechnology to business methods to software, the expansion of the definition of patentable subject matter over the last thirty years has had an important impact on innovation. Consensus has it that the biotech industry may not have developed at all, or remained embryonic, without the newly allowed patentability of genetic materials. But in recent years, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have signaled important doubts and issued unclear rulings on these matters. The Supreme Court failed to provide clear indications about the future of business methods (including financial methods) patenting in Bilski (2010) or about medical diagnostic systems in Prometheus (2012). The Supreme Court recently reconsidered genetic patenting following a petition by a consortium of medical researchers and health advocates, ruling that, while newly created DNA sequences are eligible for patenting, isolated segments of naturally occurring DNA are not. The Federal Circuit’s recent en banc review in CLS Bank v. Alice Corp (May 2013), resulted in five separate opinions and failed to clarify the test for software patent-eligibility. Together with possible push back against some expansive interpretations of patentability doctrine, we are also witnessing the emergence of new definitions of invention (especially information-based inventions like business and financial methods). No matter where one stands on the debates over patentable subject matter, it is clear that these cases are pushing the limits of traditional notions of inventions that emerged during the industrial revolution and point to the emergence of new definitions of invention for the information age, making these developments crucial to both legal scholars and entrepreneurs in some of today’s most innovative and economically vital industries.