Harvey.AI is courting law schools like Westlaw/Lexis once did, but do we really need it? After a demo, my verdict: it's ChatGPT in a black turtleneck. Good for firms needing secure doc review & RAG, but law students can already do most of this with existing tools. matthewsag.com/do-law-schoo...

New Patently-O post with Jonathan Masur on why the Federal Circuit should explicitly clarify that private sales—ones that don't lead to public use or other prior art—are prior art against the seller but not third parties: patentlyo.com/patent/2025/...

Press on Jonathan Masur's and my amicus brief from @law360.bsky.social & @bloomberglaw.com www.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberglaw...

Thank you @prmalone.bsky.social, Nina Srejovic & fantastic @law.stanford.edu Juelsgaard Clinic students Jina Zhou and Yiran (Isabella) Yang for filing this amicus brief on Jonathan Masur's & my behalf, explaining why a private third-party sale isn't prior art against an unrelated inventor:

Jonathan Masur and @patentscholar.bsky.social unravel patent law’s “disclosure puzzles”—the doctrines that demand inventors reveal enough to teach the public while still preserving the value of their inventions.

My paper with @patentscholar.bsky.social on how AI increases plagiarism risk in student and academic writing, what law should do about it (nothing), and what schools should do about it (quite a bit) is now published in the University of Chicago Law Review lawreview.uchicago.edu/online-archi...

FDA has updated their CBER/CDER net hiring data for FY 2025. Although both Centers grew in FY2023 and FY2024, in FY2025 they've lost ~16-18% (respectively) of staff, over a thousand people at CDER alone. www.fda.gov/industry/fda...

Employees inside the FDA and outside experts said they were worried the U.S. is headed toward a new era of drug regulation: one where political decisions lead, and evidence follows www.statnews.com/2025/10/14/f...

I submitted written testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act drive.google.com/file/d/1SlL9...

Excellent question. I reached out the the Office to ask about file wrapper access and they sent me here: data.uspto.gov/patent-file-... It's much less user-friendly than Patent Center was and the UI is *terrible*, so it's not a great replacement.

USPTO leadership seems to have decided that public outreach is no longer worth engaging in, limiting data access seems very much a part of that. The effect, if not the objective, is to make everything around patents and trademarks more opaque Yes, I am upset about pulling the plug on PatentsView

Is there any legitimate reason that limiting Patent Center access to verified users helps “fraud protection”? This is a problem for those of us who want to teach our students how to read a patent’s prosecution history. What is the fraud risk in reading patent data? www.uspto.gov/about-us/new...

Thanks to David Zimmer for work on Jonathan Masur’s & my amicus brief in support of cert in MSN v. Novartis, drawing on our “Disclosure Puzzles in Patent Law” article to explain why the Fed Cir’s approach to disclosure for after-arising technologies is incoherent www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

New research by Pierre Azoulay, Danielle Li, Bhaven Sampat and me. Earlier this year, the President’s budget proposed a 40% cut to the budget of the NIH. This motivated us to ask: what if the NIH had been 40% smaller?

This is bonkers. FDA is going to change leucovorin's label based on a lit review with data on 40 patients w/ cerebral folate deficiency and comparisons to "known natural history." www.statnews.com/2025/09/22/f...

In this post I explain why the suspension of Kimmel’s show looks like a blatant 1A violation, as all NINE members of SCOTUS last year made clear.... but also why courts may not be able to do much about it (and yet Kimmel should still sue!) blog.dividedargument.com/p/did-brenda...

Looking forward to delivering the academic spotlight at the @law.stanford.edu Silicon Valley IP Forum on Oct. 3. Free registration here: conferences.law.stanford.edu/siliconvalle...

Heard. See @patentscholar.bsky.social 's "Classic Patent Scholarship" project, writtendescription.blogspot.com/p/classic-sc..., which builds on my "Lost Classics of Intellectual Property Law," available on SSRN. Newton, Hooke, OTSOG, and all that.

JUST IN: 9th Circuit panel refuses Trump administration bid to lift order requiring it to reinstate University of California grants canceled under Trump DEI orders. 3-0. Judges Paez (Clinton), Christen (Obama), Desai (Biden). Doc: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

New article with @marklemley.bsky.social on how genAI facilitates academic plagiarism, why this shouldn't become a copyright/legal problem, and what universities should do about it (forthcoming in U Chi L Rev Online): papers.ssrn.com/abstract=539...

This threat to "take over" Harvard's patents is bewildering—seems like yet another example of using a tenuous legal threat to retaliate against universities for not complying with unrelated demands. I'm quoted in this WSJ story (gift link):

NEW: Trump's suspensions of UCLA's research grants is around 800 -- the ~300 we knew about for NSF and *500* NIH grants. That's according to a memo a UCLA administrator sent to the campus's researchers with grants two hours ago.

Are there any other areas where people can get access to the system the agency's initial decisionmakers will use, but only if they pay?

#Breaking: Trump administration blocks NIH from awarding any research grants and contracts www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/t...

NIH plans to shrink the share of grant applications it will award for the remainder of the fiscal year, in some cases by more than half. www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/n...

Could be a major change to patent fee structure: Commerce is "discussing charging patent holders 1% to 5% of their overall patent value" as part of Howard Lutnick's "plans to raise revenue and narrow the government's budget deficit" www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

“Despite billions in public and private funding, therapeutic development in the United States remains poorly aligned with the country’s most pressing health needs,” says SLS’s @patentscholar.bsky.social, co-author of a new @theNASEM report on drug development reform. law.stanford.edu/stanford-law...

One of FDA's Oncology Division has lost what is essentially the equivalent of a full drug review team. It's malignant hematology review teams are expected to have a staff less than half the intended size as more staff depart this August. insights.citeline.com/pink-sheet/a...

Translation for non-scientists. The major funder for cancer research in the world is now only funding proposals that score in top 4 percent. They’re funding roughly 2/3 fewer proposals than they had in recent years. I suspect the funding line has actually never been this low.

Reporter: The FDA has a new AI tool that's intended to speed up drug approvals. But several FDA employees say the new AI helper is making up studies that do not exist. One FDA employee telling us, 'Anything that you don't have time to double check is unreliable. It hallucinates confidently'

Final CBO score of the "big beautiful bill" is out Largest Medicaid cuts ever - in fact, at least 4 times the size of the previous largest; $894-$990 bn cut Kicks 10 million off health insurance Largest SNAP cuts ever, $197 bn cut Still increases the deficit by $3.4 trillion from huge tax cuts

ICYMI: I covered the Senate approps committee's vote to preserve the NSF's funding. While far from a done deal, research advocates celebrated the news. “For now, dodging an existential cut is a big win in light of everything that’s going on.” - @kennethmevans.bsky.social #AcademicSky #HigherEd

I chatted with SSRN about moving from physics to law, why I wrote a free patent casebook, and some of my recent research on patent doctrine, AI, and innovation:

On Friday, in a 34-page unanimous ruling, the 1st Circuit denied govt a stay of Judge Young’s July 2 order declaring NIH’s cancellation of 100s of research contracts as “breathtakingly arbitrary & capricious.” Some interesting things... storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... 1/5

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding. NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

ICYMI: I reviewed Trump's assault on research @justsecurity.org—terminating grants, capping indirects, cutting staff, funding as leverage etc. Courts have halted specific efforts, but there's nothing illegal about future budget cuts—just incredibly short-sighted. www.justsecurity.org/116486/trump...

Excited for our report launch next week!

The Trump administration is rapidly unraveling federal support for scientific and technology research–terminating grants, capping funding, and tying awards to political criteria. District courts are pushing back, writes @patentscholar.bsky.social, but consequences for US innovation are profound.

As courts have struck down #NIH grant terminations, the agency has charted a new path towards cutting that it hopes can withstand court challenges. @aniloza.bsky.social has the scoop. www.statnews.com/2025/07/06/h...

Exclusive: I spoke with 15 employees at the FDA to get a sense of how the agency is functioning since the April 1 layoffs. They described tanking morale and an intensifying staff exodus. Read more here: www.statnews.com/2025/07/07/f...

Among many harmful effects of this bill, cutting Medicaid not only has immediate health impacts—it also further decreases R&D incentives for health issues that disproportionately impact low-income Americans. See @rachelsachs.bsky.social, Prizing Insurance (2016) jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/artic...

Pleased to announce the 4th ed of Jonathan Masur’s and my free patent law casebook. So far it has been adopted at 70+ law schools, and students say they love its problem-centered approach and conceptual clarity. Plus it has saved them a lot of money! www.patentcasebook.org

Proud to have worked with this crew, especially Justin Walthier and Hana Ryan, who are both legal prodigies. Thanks to @prmalone.bsky.social, Nina Srejovic, and @stanfordlaw.bsky.social for support, and to @patentscholar.bsky.social for making this happen. We hope the court finds the brief helpful.

Thanks to @prmalone.bsky.social and his team at the @juelsgaardclinic.bsky.social at @stanfordlaw.bsky.social for filing this amicus brief on behalf of myself, @pierre-azoulay.bsky.social, @danielpgross.bsky.social & @sampat.bsky.social in the NIH indirect costs case papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My article with Lisa Larrimore Ouellette on how to fix the problems with double patenting is now published in the American University Law Review aulawreview.org/blog/fixing-...

I enjoyed two recent empirical papers on AI+Law, but realized they have somewhat different implications—in particular, about whether AI tools are actually useful for lawyers, or are too likely to err. I wrote up a blog post thinking through how to reconcile them: www.wilftownsend.net/p/is-ai-actu...

I made a timeline of all the actions in Trump's (almost) first 100 days that have upended science and health. It was staggering to me to see it all in one place, even though I reported on many on these events. www.statnews.com/2025/04/24/t...

I wrote about the surreal experience of teaching the First Amendment right now on a green card, teaching lofty doctrine while the government is rounding up people like me for things they say www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...