Former FCC Chief of Staff, Ed Lazarus YLS ’87, to speak about his experience at the FCC
by Heather Branch | April 17, 2012 | Other | No Comments
You are cordially invited to a talk by Ed Lazarus YLS ‘87, former FCC Chief of Staff, writer, and attorney. This talk is scheduled for Thursday, April 19 at 11:00 a.m. in Room 120, and the title of the talk is “Democracy, Technology, and the FCC – A View from the Trenches.”
Until February 2012, Mr. Lazarus served as Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski. In that capacity, he oversaw policy development and implementation, strategic planning, communications, legislative and intergovernmental affairs, and agency management. During Mr. Lazarus’s tenure, the FCC produced the first National Broadband Plan, reformed the $9 billion program aimed at universalizing access to communications services, adopted rules to preserve the open nature of the Internet, obtained substantial new authority from Congress to reallocate spectrum to support wireless broadband networks, and was named the most improved agency in government.
BIO:
Mr. Lazarus received his B.A. summa cum laude in 1981 and his J.D. in 1987 from Yale University, where he was note editor of the Yale Law Journal. After receiving his law degree, he served as a law clerk to the honorable William A. Norris on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and thereafter to Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to joining the FCC, Mr. Lazarus divided his time between law practice, writing and teaching. From 2000-2009, Mr. Lazarus practiced law at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he founded the firm’s appellate practice, chaired the national litigation steering committee, and was elected to the management committee. His practice at Akin Gump, focused on appellate litigation and legal strategy, and he handled matters ranging from administrative law to intellectual property, bankruptcy, constitutional law and federal Indian law. Prior to joining Akin Gump, Mr. Lazarus served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, where he was a member of the Criminal Appeals Section.
Mr. Lazarus is the author of two highly acclaimed books: Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present and Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court. His writing has also appeared in publications including The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune. Among dozens of television appearances, Mr. Lazarus was a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Mr. Lazarus was the recipient of a fellowship to Yale Law School and named the first Harry A. Blackmun fellow at the Aspen Institute. In addition to frequent lecturing, he has taught federal Indian law at the University of California, Davis, and constitutional law at the Cardozo School of Law and Loyola Law School. Mr. Lazarus has also served on several boards of directors, including the board of directors of Public Counsel, the nation’s largest public interest law firm.
SUPREME COURT VACATES FEDERAL CIRCUIT DECISION IN CASE CHALLENGING PATENTS ON BREAST CANCER GENES
by GenScott | April 11, 2012 | Announcements, Cases, Supreme Court | No Comments
On March 26, 2012, the Supreme Court vacated the Federal Circuit’s decision in The Association for Molecular Pathology, et. al. v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., et. al in light of its unanimous decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. 132 S.Ct. 1289 (2012). In that case, the Court invalidated a patent on a medical diagnostic test because it did nothing more than claim a law of nature and add the instruction “apply this law.” In support of the ACLU’s challenge in Myriad, members of the ISP led by ISP Fellows in the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice, Cilla Smith and Genevieve Scott, filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant certiorari to closely examine Myriad’s patents on the information contained in Breast Cancer Susceptibility Genes 1 and 2 (BRCA 1 and 2). The ISP scholars argued that allowing patent monopolies on genetic information, such as the the BRCA 1 and 2 gene sequences, stifles innovation and research.
There has been speculation about how the Supreme Court’s holding in Prometheus will impact the outcome of the Myriad case. These cases ostensibly address two different types of patents. The Prometheus case addressed the inclusion of laws of nature in patented processes; the Myriad case examines the patentability of a genetic sequence that has been isolated from a gene in nature. The impact of these two patents on innovation in diagnostic research and medical treatment is remarkably similar. This similarity is most likely the driving force behind the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate and remand the Federal Circuit’s decision in Myriad.
The patent challenges at issue in each of these cases concern the well established principle, reaffirmed by the Court in Prometheus, that ‘“laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas’ are not patentable” Id. at 1293 (citing Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U. S. 175, 185 (1981)). The Court has noted repeatedly that patents on laws or products of nature undermine the balance between rewarding innovation and encouraging further research. Accordingly, in finding that Prometheus’ patent claim was insufficient to transform a law of nature into a patent-eligible application of such a law, the Court emphasized its concern that “even though rewarding with patents those who discover new laws of nature and the like might well encourage their discovery, those laws and principles, considered generally, are ‘the basic tools of scientific and technological work’. And so there is a danger that the grant of patents that tie up their use will inhibit future innovation premised upon them….And…threaten to inhibit the development of more refined treatment recommendations that combine Prometheus’ correlations with later discovered features of metabolites, human physiology or individual patient characteristics.” Id. at 1301-1302.
The gene sequences at issue in the Myriad case are the very instructions inside each of our cells that determine what proteins are produced. Like the substance of the patents at issue in Prometheus, the BRCA gene sequences contain information derived from nature. The award of patents to Myriad has given Myriad a “double monopoly” on the BRCA 1 and 2 gene sequences, stifling innovation in the field of genetic research, limiting the advent of diagnostic technologies such as multiplex testing and full genome sequencing, and preventing research into breast and ovarian cancer as well as other deadly cancers and diseases. As in the Prometheus case, Myriad discovered the gene sequences at issue using “methods … well known in the art” and engaged in “well-understood, routine, conventional activity previously engaged in by scientists in the field” when isolating the BRCA 1 and 2 sequences. Id. at 1291 (citing Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584, 590 (1978)). The result is that Myriad has claimed a monopoly in a sequence of the human genome that is functionally identical to the information contained in the human body and, in doing so, severely inhibited the development of refined treatments and research into the undiscovered features of these genes. While the Prometheus case deals with patent processes that contain a law of nature, versus Myriad’s isolation of a gene sequence from nature, the Court’s evident concern with maintaining the proper balance of the patent system, by encouraging diagnostic research and ensuring that information derived from nature is not monopolized to prevent valuable discoveries, is certain to play an important role in the ultimate conclusion of the Myriad case.
First Amendment Issues in Regulating Reproduction Symposium
by Heather Branch | April 10, 2012 | Other | No Comments
First Amendment Issues in Regulating Reproduction
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM – 2:30 PM
Location: Room 129
Lunch will be provided
Please join the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at the ISP for a
symposium that will bring together pro-choice litigators, academics, and city
attorneys to examine First Amendment limitations on the state’s ability to
compel speech about reproductive health services. Compelled speech laws range
from city ordinances that compel anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers to post
signs disclosing what services they provide and whether they have medical
professionals on staff, to laws requiring abortion providers to give patients
information sometimes false — designed to encourage them to carry their
pregnancies to term, to laws that require abortion providers to perform,
display, and describe the results of an ultrasound of the fetus.
10:00 – 11:45 am Panel 1
Compelled Ideological Speech or Truthful Dissuasion: The Case of Mandatory
Physician Speech and Transvaginal Ultrasounds
Panelists:
Andy Beck, Staff Attorney, Reproductive Freedom Project, ACLU
Julie Rikelman, Litigation Director, Center for Reproductive Rights
Moderator:
Priscilla Smith, Senior Fellow, Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice in
the ISP at Yale Law School
12:30 – 2:15pm Panel 2
Compelled Ideological Speech or Fraud Prevention: The Case of Mandatory
Disclosures by Crisis Pregnancy Centers
Panelists:
Erin Bernstein, Deputy City Attorney, City and County of San Francisco
Suzanne Sangree, Chief Solicitor, City of Baltimore Law Department
Stephanie Toti, Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Reproductive Rights
Moderator:
Jennifer Keighley, Resident Fellow, Program for the Study of Reproductive
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