Jacob S. Sherkow is a Professor of Law and Medicine in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Law and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.
What is the focus of your current work and/or subject of your current research?
My work generally focuses on the legal and ethical implications of advanced biotechnologies, especially as related to intellectual property. I'm currently working on several projects related to drug patents, both in the U.S. and in Europe.
What classes do you teach? What are some of the topics of those classes?
I teach Patent Law and a Genomics and the Law seminar, as well as first year Property at the College of Law.
Do you have any recent awards, honors, or publications that you would like to highlight?
One recent paper focuses on the science behind antibodies—complex and extremely variable biomolecules used in some of the world's most lucrative drugs—and how that science is misaligned with two patent law doctrines: enablement and written description (also called "enabling disclosure" and "descriptive support" in Europe). This misalignment affects a $100 billion-plus market. The paper—The Antibody Patent Paradox—written with Mark Lemley at Stanford, is soon to be published in the Yale Law Journal.
What is a book (academic or non-academic, in or outside your field) that you think should be more widely read?
Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance in the United States by Hannah Dobbz is a whirlwind history of squatting—living on property one does not own—in the U.S. It's a law review article, a history, a piece of investigative journalism, an instruction manual, and a form of gonzo journalism—all at the same time. It does a superlative job of showing the connections among economic hardship, civil disobedience, and property in the U.S. in ways that many—both in the U.S. and Europe—may find surprising.