Patent Law Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

‘Patenting Life’ shares tales from a career on the cutting edge of science and the law

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 06:54:36 +0000

The Modern Law Library

‘Patenting Life’ shares tales from a career on the cutting edge of science and the law

April 9, 2025, 8:45 am CDT

Jorge Goldstein was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his family had fled to escape the Holocaust in Germany.

Jorge Goldstein entered the fields of science and law at a time of immense change for them both.

In the 1970s, huge strides were being made in biogenetics and microbiology. And in the 1980s, the intellectual property community was being asked to answer some giant questions that they raised, such as: How can you describe life, legally? Can a living being be patented? Who owns the material from your body?

The 45 years since the groundbreaking 1980 case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that living organisms could be patented, have been an intensely busy time for microbiologists, biochemists, genetic researchers and the patent lawyers who serve them. Goldstein, who has a PhD in chemistry from Harvard University and a JD from the George Washington University Law School, has been on hand to witness and help shape many of the resulting debates.

In Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology, Goldstein weaves stories from his life and practice with the fascinating histories behind some well-known medications, lesser-known scientists and groundbreaking court cases that will shape future scientific ventures. In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, he and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the book and the fascinating career that he’s had.

In the book, Goldstein explains many of the scientific developments behind discoveries such as CRISPR (short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”)—a gene-editing technology that scientists use to modify DNA—in a way that lay people can understand while offering humanizing looks at the quirky and sometimes-flawed scientists who made those discoveries.

Large moral and ethical questions are raised about how technologies are developed, commercialized and put into practice, and he does not shy away from the discussions. He also offers his perspective on how patent law can be improved to fund further scientific advancements while also protecting innovation.

Goldstein and Rawles discuss key cases that helped shape genetic research and some of the major changes that he’s seen in legal theory over his career. They also discuss “tikkun olam,” a concept in Judaism about how our actions can repair and improve the world. It’s something that Goldstein thinks is a proper focus for science and for law, and they discuss two of the pro bono projects that he has worked on with Indigenous communities in which he can use patent law to protect their rights.

Finally, Goldstein offers advice to young scientists and attorneys who are interested in practicing in these fields and shares his opinion on what artificial intelligence could mean in the patent law sphere.

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In This Podcast:

Jorge Goldstein

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Jorge Goldstein

Jorge Goldstein is a founder and senior director of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox, a prominent intellectual property law firm in Washington, D.C. He has 46 years of experience in prosecuting, licensing and litigating biotechnology patents. In 1988, Goldstein was the lead counsel in In re Wands, a pivotal decision on biotechnology enablement. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a PhD in chemistry from Harvard University and a JD from the George Washington University Law School.

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2 Irell & Manella lawyers should be sanctioned after witness ‘was tricked’ with altered document, special master says

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 02:00:37 +0000

Ethics

2 Irell & Manella lawyers should be sanctioned after witness ‘was tricked’ with altered document, special master says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 20, 2025, 3:02 pm CDT

An Irell & Manella associate who decided to alter a date on a schematic drawing to prove a point during a deposition should be sanctioned, along with a partner who missed an email revealing the plan, a special master has recommended. (Image from Shutterstock)

The associate, Benjamin Manzin-Monnin, came up with the idea to show that such dates can be unreliable, according to the March 18 opinion by special master David Folsom. Manzin-Monnin questioned a witness about the document before revealing that it had been altered.

Law360 has the story.

Folsom noted that all lawyers from Irell & Manella attend in-house ethics seminars. Folson said Manzin-Monnin should be required to attend 30 additional hours of ethics courses, along with the partner he notified in an email chain, Jason Sheasby.

Folsom also recommended that Irell & Manella pay fees and costs incurred by the special master and defendant Samsung Electronics in connection with the sanctions motion. And he said Irell & Manella’s client, CogniPower, should lose an hour of trial time in its patent infringement case, filed against Samsung Electronics in federal court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The deposition witness was an executive at a company that, according to Samsung Electronics, had an invention that predates CogniPower’s patents, Law360 explains.

A law firm employee had advised Manzin-Monnin in September 2024 to “get clear directions” from a senior attorney regarding the “mocked up dates on evidence floating around.” Manzin-Monnin replied that he had emailed “Jason,” an apparent reference to Sheasby.

But Sheasby said he “missed” the email from Manzin-Monnin while acknowledging that it was his responsibility to read it.

In a declaration, Sheasby said during the deposition, Manzin-Monnin had shown the expert witness “the correct document, then later the altered version, and then immediately the correct and altered side by side, and then told the witness he altered on[e] of the documents.”

The witness “was tricked” and “obviously confused” by questions about the altered date, Folsom said in the opinion. The fact that Manzin-Monnin did not mark the altered document as an exhibit during the deposition “is immaterial,” Folsom said.

Sheasby said in the declaration Manzin-Monnin has been subject to “professional strictures” as a result of his behavior. In addition, the firm’s general counsel had scheduled a mandatory March 19 ethics seminar for all the firm’s attorneys to address the events and to “ensure that nothing of this nature happens again.”

Neither Manzin-Monnin nor Sheasby immediately responded to the ABA Journal’s email request for comment. Nor did a firm spokesperson immediately reply to a Journal email.

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Morgan Lewis, plaintiff settle alleged age, race bias case

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 15:16:42 +0000

Law Firms

Morgan Lewis, plaintiff settle alleged age, race bias case

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 19, 2025, 9:01 am CST

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and a patent prosecution specialist who sued for alleged age and race bias have agreed to dismiss the case. (Photo from Shutterstock)

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and a patent prosecution specialist who sued for alleged age and race bias have agreed to dismiss the case.

The dismissal followed a settlement agreement between the law firm and the plaintiff, Melinda Robertson, Law360 reports.

Robertson’s attorney, Neil S. Hyman, told Law360 on Feb. 12 that a settlement had been reached, but he could not provide details.

Robertson, a Black patent prosecution specialist born in 1962, had alleged that Morgan Lewis gave better opportunities to white, younger co-workers. When she complained, Robertson alleged, the firm retaliated by having weekly performance meetings in a glass-walled conference room visible to colleagues.

Robertson had filed her lawsuit in March 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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Criticizing plaintiff’s ‘chutzpah,’ federal judge holds lawyer jointly responsible for over $207K in legal fees

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 13:42:35 +0000

Trials & Litigation

Criticizing plaintiff’s ‘chutzpah,’ federal judge holds lawyer jointly responsible for over $207K in legal fees

By Debra Cassens Weiss

August 29, 2024, 2:34 pm CDT

A federal judge in Houston is holding a lawyer and his client liable for more than $207,500 in their opponent’s legal fees (Image from Shutterstock)

A federal judge in Houston is holding a lawyer and his client liable for more than $207,500 in their opponent’s legal fees, saying they filed a patent infringement lawsuit and continued to litigate it after the defendant “pointed out its obvious lack of merit.”

U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas required Houston lawyer William P. Ramey III and his client VDPP to pay the fees in their suit contending that a Volkswagen backup camera infringed VDPP’s patent, Reuters reports.

VDPP had argued that the fee award should be limited to the time spent defending “the exceptional portion of the case,” a reference to parts of a case found to be frivolous or unreasonable.

Rosenthal responded that the entire case was frivolous, and VDPP’s arguments displayed “chutzpah.”

“The entire case was exceptional, from the outset, for reasons that VDPP and its counsel knew,” wrote Rosenthal in her Aug. 13 decision. “There is no need to allocate the fees between the frivolous and nonfrivolous aspects of the case. It was all frivolous.”

VDPP sought future damages that were “clearly unrecoverable” because the patent had expired, Rosenthal wrote. The company sought past damages that were “clearly unrecoverable” because VDPP had not complied with marking requirements, she said.

And VDPP “lied about the existence of prior licensing agreements that confirmed the meritless nature of its case,” Rosenthal said.

In a prior decision, Rosenthal said settlement agreements licensing the VDPP patent did not require licensees to comply with marking requirements. VDPP had said there were no settlement agreements—only “agreements in principle,” Rosenthal said.

According to Reuters, Ramey and his law firm filed more than 100 suits this year, including at least 25 in which VDPP was the plaintiff. Federal judges have imposed fee sanctions in Ramey’s cases at least seven times in four years, according to Reuters. The sanctions total is at least $810,000, according to the wire service.

Ramey told Reuters in a statement that he and VDPP “respect all court orders. We appeal those orders we think are incorrect, as we have done in this case.”

Ramey did not immediately reply to an ABA Journal request for comment made in an email and in a message left with his firm.

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