Hans Sauer
Posts by Hans Sauer
Waiving IP Rights During Times of COVID: A ‘False Good Idea’
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, …
The Re-Written American Axle Opinion Does Not Bring Peace of Mind for Section 101 Stakeholders
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 …
Why Helsinn v. Teva Creates Inscrutable Uncertainty About the Scope of Prior Art Instead of Confirming Longstanding Law
To the casual observer, the Supreme Court’s January 23 decision in Helsinn v. Teva may seem like no big deal. In just a few pages of text, …
Price Controls and Compulsory Licensing Reduce Patient’s Healthcare Options
Once we go down a path of government price controls and compulsory licensing we will have foregone opportunities for other, more rational policy choices and will soon …
Expansion of the Blocking Patent Doctrine: Trading Logic for Gremlins
Since Merck & Co. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals, blocking patent arguments have arisen in the Federal Circuit primarily in the pharmaceutical patent context, and until now have largely been …
Conjecture and Speculation in Patent Obviousness: Trading Logic for Hindsight
Hindsight bias, the phenomenon that things seem more predictable and obvious after they have occurred, is one of the most widely-studied “decision traps” in psychology... Patent litigation …
Doubling Down on Double Adjudication – the MerchSource post-issuance review model
Imagine this: you become aware of a patent that might cover your products, so you reach out to the patentee to secure a license agreement. After negotiating …
Some Observations on Drug Patents – A Response to Arie Michelsohn
Nothing in my own experience leads me to believe that the PTO applies a lower anticipation or obviousness standard to pharmaceuticals, and I expect this would be …
The U.S. Government’s Position in ACLU v. Myriad Genetics: Observations on a ‘Waste of Time and Space’
So maybe the Federal Circuit won’t find “preemption” to be useful in deciding this appeal; we’ll know soon enough. I, for one, can’t make …