New journal seeks contributions on bio-patents, SPCs

The Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) has just been launched by Oxford University Press. According to the notice on the JLB's website, it is

"... is the first peer-reviewed legal journal focused on the advances at the intersection of law and the biosciences. A co-venture between Duke University, Harvard University Law School, and Stanford University, and published by Oxford University Press, this open access, online, and interdisciplinary academic journal publishes cutting-edge scholarship in this important new field. The Journal contains original and response articles, essays, and commentaries on a wide range of topics, including bioethics, neuroethics, genetics, reproductive technologies, stem cells, enhancement, patent law, and food and drug regulation. JLB is published as one volume with three issues per year with new articles posted online on an ongoing basis.

The biosciences are booming. Stem cell technologies are developing rapidly, reproductive technologies are being used in new ways and with new frequency, life science patents are hotly contested, and neuroscience and genetics are being used to make new predictions about behavior and health. And that’s just a taste of the current scientific revolutions in the biosciences".

This blogger has been appointed to the JLB's editorial board, in which capacity he should like to encourage the submission of learned contributions on patents in the biosciences, and of course articles on the legal and commercial dimensions to pharmaceutical patent term extension, whether in the European Union or beyond it.