Dr. Aman Gebru, a visiting assistant professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, recently accepted an offer to publish a paper in the Denver Law Review for April 2019. Titled “Patents, Disclosure, and Biopiracy,” the paper examines the economics of information disclosure in the patent system and how to address issues that arise when inventors utilize the knowledge of indigenous peoples.

“The question that my paper tries to answer is this: Should inventors disclose information about the source of traditional knowledge they relied upon in their inventive process when they claim patent rights over their invention? I argue that inventors should disclose such information,” Dr. Gebru. “If inventors are required to disclose the source of traditional knowledge they relied upon, the patent system could easily reject undeserving patent applications.” In addition, “the disclosure will also empower source communities to request recognition and sharing benefits from inventions that are developed based on their knowledge. The ultimate result may be a collaborative relationship between researchers and source communities in which the public benefits from innovative products and services being produced more quickly and cheaply.”

Gebru will present the paper at George Washington University on September 26, 2018, as part of the university’s Intellectual Property Law Program and again on September 29, 2018, at the Global Intellectual Property Congress hosted by American University Washington College of Law.