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Hans Sauer
Deputy General Counsel, VP for IP
Biotechnology Industry Organization
Hans Sauer is Deputy General Counsel, and Vice President for Intellectual Property for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a major trade association representing over 1,100 biotechnology companies from the medical, agricultural, environmental and industrial sector. At BIO, Mr. Sauer advises the organization’s board of directors, amicus committee, and various staff committees on patent and other intellectual property-related matters.
Prior to taking his current position at BIO in 2006, Professor Sauer was Chief Patent Counsel for MGI Pharma, Inc., and Senior Patent Counsel for Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. Mr. Sauer has 18 years of professional in-house experience in the biotechnology industry, where he worked on several drug development programs, being responsible for patent prosecution and portfolio oversight, clinical trial health information privacy, and sales and marketing legal compliance.
Mr. Sauer did his postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech, Inc. in South San Francisco, and holds a M.S. degree from the University of Ulm in his native Germany; a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Lund, Sweden; and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Recent Articles by Hans Sauer
Over the course of four months, close to 850 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in over 100 countries. To the extent the unprecedented pace of research, development and manufacturing to combat the ongoing pandemic is a success, it has many fathers. But it would not have been possible without the participation of the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry and its collaboration with global partners. To ensure that developed and developing countries around the globe maintain and expand access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, it is critical that the U.S. government support ongoing industry collaboration and oppose well-intentioned but counterproductive efforts to waive intellectual property (IP) rights.
In the spring of 2018, a district court invalidated a patent claiming methods of manufacturing a pickup truck drive shaft for failure to recite patent-eligible subject matter. Industry stakeholders, scholars, and legal commenters were more than a little incredulous, since methods of manufacturing such tangible objects have long been patentable in the United States. In due course, the Federal Circuit (in a 2-1 decision) drew even more exasperation when it affirmed the district court’s holding. If the ensuing stream of bewildered blog posts, amicus briefs, and statements by public officials are anything to go by, many viewed the case as another high water mark in our uniquely American Section 101 jurisprudence…. Then, enter the July 31, 2020 re-written majority opinion in American Axle. Rather than allow the case to go to the full court for consideration, the majority decided to edit some of the troubling language from the original panel opinion.
