Sowing Seed of Change Panel
Speaker: Sowing Seeds of Change: Cultivating a Balanced Approach to Agricultural Biotechnology
Friday, March 17, 2006, 11:00 am Pound 102, Pound Hall, Harvard Law School
Panelists
Joanne Scott is a Professor of European Law and Director of the Centre for Law and Governance at the University College London, Europe. She is a regular visiting professor at Columbia Law School, and is visiting this year at Harvard Law School. She is currently working on issues surrounding the regulation of food safety in a global context, and on new approaches to governance in the European Union. Her recent publications include a co-edited volume on “Law and new governance in the EU and US,” Hart Publishing (2006); “International Trade and Environmental Governance: Relating Rules (and Standards) in the EU and the WTO,” 15 European Journal of International Law 307 (2004), and “Mind the Gap: Law and New Approaches to Governance in the European Union,” with David Trubek European Law Journal 1 (2002).
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies. She has held academic positions at Cornell, Yale, Oxford, and Kyoto. At Cornell, she founded and chaired the Department of Science and Technology Studies. She has also been a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Cambridge, Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, and Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio study center. Her research concerns the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and public policy of modern democracies, with a particular focus on the challenges of globalization. She has written and lectured widely on problems of environmental regulation, risk management, and biotechnology in the United States, Europe, and India. Her books include Controlling Chemicals (1985), The Fifth Branch (1990), Science at the Bar (1995), and Designs on Nature (2005). Jasanoff has served on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. She holds AB, MA, JD, and PhD degrees.
Percy Schmeiser is a farmer and seed developer from Western Canada that was involved in a legal battle with Monsanto on farmers’ rights versus patent law. In 2000, he received the Mahatma Gandhi Award from India for the Betterment of Human Kind in a Non-Violent Way. Mr. Schmeiser is a strong advocate of designing patent law so that it protects farmers’ right to use their seeds and plants from year to year.
Carl Schwelder is a member of the Business Services Group at McDonough Holland & Allen PC. He is a patent attorney with significant expertise in biotechnology matters. Carl’s practice includes counseling clients on the preparation and prosecution of patent applications, development of patent portfolios, patent litigation, patent interference, trademark opposition, and oversight of European patents and oppositions. His patent experience includes negotiating and drafting license and research agreements; technology evaluation and assessment of third party patents relating to fermentation technologies, biomaterials and biopharmaceuticals, as well as various gene discovery technologies.
Carl previously served as general, intellectual property and patent
counsel to Calgene, where he developed an extensive intellectual
property portfolio relating to the company’s expression and gene
discovery technologies and provided legal counsel to various Calgene
subsidiaries, including produce and seed companies. Carl was most
recently affiliated with Novozymes Biotech, where he supported the work
of the licensing group and developed patent strategies relating to a
variety of the company’s newer research efforts.