Patent Pending: How Science Becomes Intellectual Property
On Friday, October 16th, BCLA brought together scientists, attorneys, and entrepreneurs at USC's Ronald Tutor Campus Center for "Patent Pending: How Science Becomes Intellectual Property," an evening tracing the path from lab discovery to protected invention, and the legal battles that have shaped what can and can't be owned.
The keynote came from Wayne W. Grody, M.D., Ph.D., a UCLA physician and Professor of Pathology, Pediatrics, and Human Genetics, who served as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)'s expert witness in the landmark Supreme Court case Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. Dr. Grody walked the room through the rise of gene patenting in the 1990s and 2000s, when companies and universities raced to patent individual human genes, including Myriad Genetics's exclusive patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2, the genes linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. For nearly two decades, Myriad's monopoly meant no other lab in the country could test patients for BRCA mutations, cutting off second opinions and driving up costs for academic labs like Dr. Grody's own.
He described how the case wound through federal courts for years before reaching the Supreme Court in 2013, where he watched the oral arguments alongside Francis Collins and James Watson, who had filed a brief arguing that patenting DNA itself would have strangled molecular biology in its infancy. The Court ruled unanimously, 9–0, that isolated human genes are products of nature and not patentable, a decision that reshaped genetic testing overnight. Dr. Grody's larger point was that the case turned on a deceptively simple question dating back to Thomas Jefferson's original patent clauses: what counts as an "invention" versus a product of nature.
The panel that followed brought the keynote's themes down to the ground level of actually building and protecting IP, featuring Alejandra Rodriguez, Ph.D., Patent Agent at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Mark van Zee, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO of Saku Biosciences, Song Qu, Ph.D., Senior Associate in Business Development and Licensing at Cedars-Sinai, and Sarah Cork, Ph.D., J.D., Partner and Life Sciences IP Counsel at Cork Maloney LLP, moderated by Elena Hughes, M.S., Clinical Project Manager at UCLA Health.
Each panelist represented a different stage of the same pipeline. Qu described how Cedars-Sinai's tech transfer office evaluates inventions for patentability and market fit before filing, and how promising technology can still stall out if no licensee ever emerges. Van Zee, who took Saku Biosciences from an undergraduate lab sketch to a revenue-generating company, offered a reality check for aspiring founders: talk to customers and confirm real demand before investing in patent protection. "If there's no money to be made, you don't have a company," he said. Rodriguez and Cork spoke to the attorney's role in translating a founder's business priorities into patent claims that actually hold up. Both warned that one of the most common ways startups lose investor confidence is murky IP ownership: not having clean assignments or licenses in place before diligence begins.
The panel also circled back to a tension Dr. Grody's keynote had raised from the other direction: patents can be essential to attracting investment, but overly broad or exclusive ones can restrict access to care. With AI, gene editing, and other fast-moving technologies raising new IP questions, panelists noted that trade secrets and proprietary data are increasingly competing with patents as tools for maintaining a competitive edge.
Panelists also pointed to new pressures on the IP landscape. Van Zee noted that biotech startups now compete for capital not just with each other but with AI companies promising much faster returns, making a strong IP position central to convincing investors to wait a decade or more for a payoff. Qu added that technologies like gene editing now come in layers, from foundation technology to delivery platforms to manufacturing, which makes freedom-to-operate analysis more important than ever. Cork offered a word of caution on AI in the inventive process: because patent law rests on human ingenuity, inventions publicly described as “AI-designed” may face questions about validity and enforceability.
On common mistakes, the panel agreed that an investor pitch is not a PhD defense: investors want to know whether the technology works, whether people will pay for it, and who is steering the ship. Van Zee urged founders to define their business model before negotiating licenses, since university terms are often built around pharma rather than service or tool companies, while Qu reminded attendees that those terms are open to negotiation. Both Cork and Van Zee stressed getting legal counsel early, since fixing IP assignments after the fact can become costly enough to threaten a young company. The same logic applied to timing: file a provisional patent as soon as there is any sign of commercial potential, and always before publishing or speaking with vendors, collaborators, or CROs. For those curious about these careers, the panelists pointed to tech transfer internships, early conversations with customers and founders, and experience as a patent agent or examiner as ways in.
Those questions didn’t stop when the formal program ended. The evening wound down with networking over food and drinks, giving attendees a relaxed setting to keep the conversation going as they traded questions about their own inventions, swapped career advice, and connected with both speakers and each other.
A special thank you to our event sponsor, Cork Maloney LLP, for their support, and to our continued sponsors, Amgen, Teknova, LA BioSpace, and Magnify at CNSI, for helping make this event possible.
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