Life Science Students:
Second Term: 0.5 credits
Life Science Graduate Student registration: Life Science Graduate students cannot enrol directly via ROSI (you will falsely be told the course is full) but must instead contact the Master of Biotechnology Program to register (Adrian Berg <adrian.berg@utoronto.ca>).
"Lectures, through cases drawn through the industrial application of biotechnology, drugs, life science software and medical devices, will expand and build upon the legal basics set out in the introduction of the course."
ALL Students
This course is intended for law students (ideally with some background in life science) and life science graduate students. The course introduces patent law in the first four lectures and then examines the application of this framework through a series of specific examples drawn from commercial examples of biotechnology and medical devices. Patent agents and lawyers working in specific areas of patent protection will participate in the latter part of the course. Lectures, through cases drawn through the industrial application of biotechnology and medical devices, will expand and build upon the legal basics set out in the introduction of the course. Guest speakers will either be patent agents or patent lawyers who work in the area in question.
Major project: Students will be randomly assigned to teams that will be responsible for putting together a short patent application for mock submission. A commercial example will be introduced in class where a specific set of 3 published peer reviewed papers will be designated as the prior art along with any media reports as appropriate. Students will treat any published findings outside this designated prior art as a “new discovery” from their labs. Student teams will then, upon a pre-set time, be able to register patent claims online on a web site upon submission of a patent filing. Once instructors have received this filing, these claims and the discovery become part of the prior art in the course other teams must negotiate in submitting their patent filings. Students will be limited by the fees associated with the number of claims they can make and what is appropriate for a single patent application. The online website (blackboard) will have a time stamp of each patent submission. The last session in the class will involve teams as they briefly present their claims and discuss in the context of other group declarations the possible infringement by others, the strength of their claims, freedom to operate and experimental support.
