Prospects for Patent Litigation in Congress with panelists Rebecca Eisenberg, University of Michigan Law School; Robert Merges, Boalt Hall School of Law; and Kevin Outterson, West Virginia University College of Law. Moderated by Robert Barr, BCLT, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
Bio
Robert Barr
Robert Barr is the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. Formerly, he was vice president for intellectual property and worldwide patent counsel for Cisco Systems in San Jose, California, where he was responsible for all patent prosecution, licensing and litigation.
Barr has taught at University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and at Hastings College of the Law, where he was an adjunct professor of patent law from 1994 to 1999.
A frequent speaker on patent reform, Barr has testified twice at the Federal Trade Commission hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy. He was named by the Daily Journal as one of the top 25 intellectual property lawyers in California in 2003, and as one of the top 10 in-house intellectual property lawyers in 2004.
Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Rebecca S. Eisenberg is a graduate of Stanford University and Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was articles editor of the California Law Review. Following law school she served as law clerk for Chief Judge Robert F. Peckham on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and then practiced law as a litigator in San Francisco. She joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1984.
Professor Eisenberg regularly teaches courses in patent law, trademark law, FDA law, and runs workshops on intellectual property and student scholarship. She has previously taught courses on torts, legal regulation of science, and legal issues in biopharmaceutical research. She has written and lectured extensively about the role of intellectual property in biopharmaceutical research, publishing in scientific journals as well as law reviews. She spent the 1999-2000 academic year as a visiting professor of law, science and technology at Stanford Law School. She has received grants from the program on Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research for her work on private appropriation and public dissemination of DNA sequence information.
Professor Eisenberg has played an active role in public policy debates concerning the role of intellectual property in biopharmaceutical research. She is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health, the Panel on Science, Technology and Law of the National Academies, and the Board of Directors of the Stem Cell Genomics and Therapeutics Network in Canada. Professor Eisenberg is the Robert and Barbara Luciano Professor of Law.
Robert P. Merges
Before joining the Boalt faculty in 1995, Robert Merges was a faculty member at Boston University School of Law and served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.
Merges has authored or coauthored three books, Patent Law and Policy: Cases and Materials, Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age, and Legal Protection for Computer Technology. Recent articles include "As Many as Six Impossible Patents before Breakfast: Property Rights for Business Concepts and Patent System Reform," in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (1999); "The Control of Strategic Alliances: An Empirical Analysis of Biotechnology Collaborations," in the Journal of Industrial Economics (1998); and "Intellectual Property and Digital Content: Notes on a Scorecard," in Rivista di Diritto Industriale (1998).
In addition to teaching and research projects, Merges also serves as a special consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, and is a member of the Department's Task Force on Intellectual Property.
Kevin Outterson
Kevin Outterson joined the faculty at Boston University Law in Fall 2007. He began teaching as an associate professor of law at West Virginia University in 2002. Before coming to WVU, he was an income partner in the Tax and International groups at McDermott Will & Emery and a capital partner in the Health Law group at Baker Donelson.
He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge (LL.M.) and Northwestern University (B.S. & J.D.). Professor Outterson teaches courses in health care, business law and globalization. His research work focuses on two areas: global pharmaceutical markets and health disparities.
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