Intellectual Property Law

Pharyngula, we are here

Posted on April 14, 2008
PZ Myers of Pharyngula has asked bloggers everywhere to help build a Google bomb that promotes the National Center for Science Education's website, Expelled Exposed. The project consists of embedding the word Expelled inside a matched pair of <a> and </a> tags...

Biodiversity & Climate Change

Posted on April 14, 2008
Last week I gave a presentation on biodiversity & climate change for the faculty workshop series here at the University of Louisville School of Law that I thought may be of interest to some Biolaw readers. Biodiversity loss is a much more insidious threat than climate change, underappreciated by the public and many policymakers...

Dendrobium: Family Orchidaceae's tree of life

Posted on April 11, 2008
I.V. Passmoore, Dendrobium Orchid (n.d.)Dendrobium refers to a large genus of tropical orchids comprising roughly 1200 species. The term dendrobium combines the Greek words ?????? (tree) and ???? (life). These orchids range throughout much of southern and eastern Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand...

The Most Challenging Audience: The Public

Posted on April 09, 2008
Tomorrow evening I will deliver a lecture in The University Lecture Series on Global Climate Change at the University of Kansas. My talk - "Climate Change and the Changing Legal Climate" - will focus on the awkward, and sometimes openly hostile, interaction between law and science in guiding climate change policy...

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Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology

Posted on April 04, 2008
Interface and Pain, watercolors by Sharon BurgmayerHerewith the video proceedings of the Kansas Law Review's symposium, Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology (November 9, 2007), to be published in volume 55, issue 4 of the Review.Read the rest of this post ...

National Autism Day

Posted on April 01, 2008
April 2 is national autism day. Since a young cousin of mine was just diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, I am paying more attention to the day than usual.Austism, and its spectrum of related disorders, are confusing and difficult to understand. The array of developmental syndromes known as autism spectrum disorders range from severe disability and cognitive impairment to the socially awkward eccentric with Asperger's syndrome...

Biolaw: Cracking the Code

Posted on April 01, 2008
Biolaw: Cracking the CodeThe neologism biolaw describes all areas of law informed by the life sciences. Health law, bioethics, environmental law, natural resources law, agricultural law, food and drug law, biotechnology, law and neuroscience, law and behavioral psychology, and evolutionary analysis of law all share a common scientific core...

Governance & Forest Conservation

Posted on March 31, 2008
In light of the potential for REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) credits to enter the post-2012 climate regime, it is important to remember that officially-sanctioned forest activities are only a portion of the problem. Governmental and nongovernmental assessments estimate that illegal logging accounts for over half of timber extracted from the tropical forests of some major timber-producing nations...

Creationism at Mall of the Americas

Posted on March 22, 2008
According to the NYT, there was a screening of the new creationist film Expelled (oh, excuse me . . . "intelligent" design) at the Mall of the Americas. Apparently, the film's producer refused to let Professor P. Z. Myers in to the screening, though Richard Dawkins somehow made the cut...

The Encyclopedia Of Life Adds Pages

Posted on March 21, 2008
The Encyclopedia Of Life ("EOL") has a lofty goal: to collect every bit of information about every type of organism together in a single, user-friendly website. The last time Biolaw discussed the EOL ("Writing The Book Of Life", May 22, 2007), the website was a great idea, but lacked any substantial content...

Patrick S. O'Donnell's bibliographies on bioethics and on environmental and ecological worldviews

Posted on March 15, 2008
I am pleased to announce that Patrick S. O'Donnell, one of the smartest readers and commentators in the legal blogosphere, is now blogging at Ratio Juris. Patrick's first contribution includes links to two of his remarkably thorough reading lists, one on bioethics and the other on environmental and ecological worldviews, and a description of his storehouse of bibliographies...

Ehrlich-Simon Bet Update

Posted on March 11, 2008
The issue of whether natural resources and environmental amenities are depleted or improved over time is vital to the making of sound policy and law. In 1980 three prominent Bay Area academics (Stanford's Paul Ehrlich and Berkeley's Johns Harte and Holdren) bet business economist Julian Simon that the real (inflation-adjusted) price of five commodity metals (that is, chromium, copper, tungsten, tin, and nickel) would rise by the year 1990...

Bad science, shrewd politics?

Posted on March 04, 2008
It?s indisputable that autism is on the rise among children. The question is, What?s causing it? And we go back and forth, and there?s strong evidence that indicates that it?s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.— Senator John McCainAnd with that pronouncement, Senator John McCain touched one of the most politically controversial questions in modern medicine...

In plain sight: Simple rules for complex camouflage

Posted on February 19, 2008
To the most faithful readers of Jurisdynamics and BioLaw, I owe a small apology. The "life-dinner principle" outlined in Richard Dawkins & John R. Krebs, Arms Races Between and Within Species, 205:1161 Proc. Royal Soc'y London: Series B, Biol. Scis. 489-511 (1979) — the observation that "a lineage under strong selection may out-evolve a weakly selected one" — is a bedrock tenet of evolutionary biology...

Happy Valentine's Day

Posted on February 14, 2008
Happy Valentine's Day from BioLaw.

Celebrate Evolution Sunday

Posted on February 04, 2008
Now that Super Bowl XLII is safely behind us, we can look forward to Evolution Sunday 2008. According to a report in The Scientist, 467 congregations planned their church services around Evolution Sunday in 2006, and 618 participated in 2007. This year's Evolution Sunday will take place February 10...

The daily mammal

Posted on January 26, 2008
The Daily Mammal expresses a dream of New Mexico-based artist Jennifer Rae Atkins "to [try to] draw [close to] every mammal on earth." Jennifer has set out a goal of drawing one mammal each day. "Since there are about 5,000 named mammal species, give or take, it should take [her] about 14 years to meet this goal...

Almost Alive

Posted on January 24, 2008
Dr. Craig Venter does not simply push the envelope of biology: he recreates it. His research group, The Institute for Genetic Research ("TIGR"), was first to sequence an entire genome, that of Haemophilus influenzae (the infectious eubacterium that causes influenza)...

Mercury and fish

Posted on January 24, 2008
The New York Times reported yesterday that tuna served in Manhattan restaurants as sushi contained unacceptably high levels of mercury. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and motor impairments...

Top Ten Insights Into Biodiversity Law

Posted on January 17, 2008
To conclude their guest contributions to BioLaw, my KU Biodiversity Law class has come up with a top ten list of insights into biodiversity law that they learned during the class in the Virgin Islands. In no particular order, here they are:(1) The greatest threats to biodiversity are habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, (over)population, and overexploitation...

From Virgin Islands To Experienced Biodiversity Law Students

Posted on January 15, 2008
As my KU Biodiversity Law class draws to an end, here is my students' last dispatch from those pearls of biodiversity, the Virgin Islands:We began our day at Botany Bay. A biologist discussed the progression of the development plans of the west side of Saint Thomas...

Bats, Snakes, And Legal Ladders

Posted on January 14, 2008
As my KU Biodiversity Law students enter the final stretch of the class, they learned an impressive amount about law and biological diversity today. Here is their report:Today was one of the longest but most interesting days we had. In the morning we traveled to the East side of the island to visit a biologist at the VI Department of Fish and Wildlife...

Critical Issues About Critical Habitat

Posted on January 13, 2008
Today my KU Biodiversity Law students explored environmental permitting and endangered species law. Here are their observations:This afternoon we focused on endangered species on Saint Thomas. After Hurricane Marilyn hit the island in 1995, 95% of structures on Saint Thomas were heavily damaged...

Biodiversity Law Across Drake's Passage

Posted on January 12, 2008
Here is the second in a series of daily observations about my KU Biodiversity Law class' experiences learning about biodiversity law in the Virgin Islands:Today we traveled to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) to explore Tortola and Jost Van Dyke. We discovered that the BVI contains much less development, and therefore a greater area of land and water available for biodiversity conservation, than do the United States Virgin Islands (USVI)...

Sustainability And Coral Reef Encounters

Posted on January 11, 2008
Starting today, my KU Biodiversity Law students will be offering their daily observations about their experiences learning about biodiversity law in the Virgin Islands. Here is their first installment:We started our morning by taking the ferry from St...

A Life Of Ease(ments)

Posted on January 10, 2008
For the second year in a row a group of KU Law School students have escaped chilly Lawrence, Kansas, for the ideal weather of the Virgin Islands, to take Biodiversity Law. The first two days of class have been extremely illuminating. Starting tomorrow one student per day will become a guest Biolaw blogger to share the new insights into biodiversity law gleaned from their activities in the VI...

Enforcing Forest Protection Laws in Mexico

Posted on December 12, 2007
Last week, Mexican police conducted the largest raid on illegal logging operations in the nation?s history. Raiding 19 sawmills, police arrested 56 people and seized roughly 6,600 tons of illegally harvested timber. The raids occurred around the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Central Mexico...

Cats versus birds

Posted on December 03, 2007
Jurisdynamics Network correspondent Dan Kowalski has directed my attention to this New York Times Magazine feature: Kill the Cat That Kills the Bird?:[There is a] strange Sylvester-and-Tweety feud between birders and cat fanciers . . . ...

Australia's New Environmental Rudder

Posted on November 30, 2007
For years, the United States has been able to dodge claims that it stood alone against the Kyoto Protocol. Even leaving aside developing countries with no legal obligations under Kyoto, the U.S. could point to its developed brother in nonratification arms: Australia...

FDA Hearings On Restricting Salt: Should Health Advocates' Demands for Government Restrictions On Salt Be Taken Cum Grano Salis?

Posted on November 29, 2007
The FDA held public hearings this week over the GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status of salt. The hearings are in response to health advocates who argue that salt should be treated as a food additive. This would allow the FDA to set limits on the amount of salt that could be added to foods...

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