Court says university, company co-owners of patent

Business Law

Ownership of a patent for technology to detect HIV levels in patients' blood was correctly split between Stanford University and the pharmaceutical giant Roche, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

By a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a lower court's decision making the company and the university co-owners of a patent for technology in HIV test kits.

Stanford asserted it owned the technology because its discoverer worked there. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act allows universities to retain rights to research funded by federal grants.

But Stanford researcher Mark Holodniy also signed a contract that gave Roche the patent to anything that resulted from their collaboration. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit made Roche and Stanford co-owners, and the high court agreed.

"Nowhere in the Act are inventors expressly deprived of their interest in federally funded inventions," said Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion.

Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg dissented.

"I cannot so easily accept the majority's conclusion — that the individual inventor can lawfully assign an invention (produced by public funds) to a third party, thereby taking that invention out from under the Bayh-Dole Act's restrictions, conditions and allocation rules," Breyer said.

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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC

A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party

Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party

However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.

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