Central Download

Boats Against the Current Baz Luhrmanns The Great Gatsby

Ive seen Baz Luhrmanns version of The Great Gatsby five times now. Im not even ashamed to admit it. If I were to somehow become Alien out of Spring Breakers, it wouldnt be Scarface Id have on repeat, it would be The Great Gatsby. Anything remotely Gatsby I snap up - whether it be reblogging my 100th gif of Jordan Baker or changing my cover photo on Facebook or finding something pretty to adorn my bedroom walls with.


Despite all this, I dont actually like The Great Gatsby as a film all that much. Lets put all of this into context: last term I did this huge research project about modern adaptations of classic films. Now, I wont bore you with the gory details since that thing ended up being like, 40 pages long, but The Great Gatsby was my main focus. This was because I had never seen so many people around my age go absolutely nuts for this one movie. Admittedly, this was mainly because of the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio is descended from angels and were all materialistic magpies that will swoop in on anything that glitters (so you can imagine the field day we had with this). Lets just say, I wasnt the only one reblogging, cover photo-ing or adorning everything Gatsby.

However, I was the only one who had actually read The Great Gatsby, the great American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was the only one who originally hated Tom Buchanan, knew the tragedy of Gatsby and frowned upon Daisys decisions. And now I had a whole lot of people joining the party because it never killed nobody. Okay, so Im not a thick-rimmed glasses wearing hipster. But Baz Luhrmanns version - no matter how much I love the guy and will defend his work until the bitter end - is not a good representation of the book. It is just a good representation of how to get the youngins in to watch something that doesnt have (many) explosions or robots and the like, and even perhaps read the book.


The conclusion I came to in my really long research report was that The Great Gatsby is not a book that can be translated to the screen. F. Scott Fitzgerald was an absolute master with his words. So much so that it is almost like he is speaking in his own language. Theres one particular quote that I found by Anne Margaret Daniel of Huffington Post that said "Fitzgeralds language has already done all the cinematic work for the actors, directors, set designers and producers. The Great Gatsby is an interior book, little concerned with externals. Fitzgerald conjures what he wants to say by way of description with only a few delicate strokes of words...We use our imaginations to fill out the pictures for ourselves, where a camera cannot". Which would leave you in a pretty sticky spot if you were thinking of giving Fitz the cinematic treatment. Even moreso if youre adapting a book often lauded for its subtle writing...and your name is Baz Luhrmann, the king of excess.


Yes, I have sat there watching The Great Gatsby rolling my eyes at Luhrmanns feeble attempts at tackling the great motifs of the eye of T.J. Eckleburg and the green light. Theres only so many scenes of Leonardo DiCaprio reaching out to the distant, likely CGI green light at the end of Daisys dock that one can take. I love how Michaelis pops up in the background for no obvious reason, but hes quite the big part of the book. I have made some vociferous, angry statements about the end and how mangled it is compared to the book (what is worse that it was originally similar to the book, including the final scene with Jordan Baker - why would you cut a scene with the flawless Elizabeth Debicki in it?!). But if theres one thing that this film is very good at being, it is extremely faithful to the novel. 85% of the plot remains intact, save for the ending. 75% of the very limited dialogue from the novel remains intact. Yet, it feels like a very loose adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgeralds novel. And again, thats because we have Baz Luhrmann, the king of excess, throwing glitter literally everywhere, putting a huge gold organ in Gatsbys house and, well, introducing New York to a song thats most expressive line is "coke on her black skin made a stripe like a zebra".


Dont get me wrong, reading about Luhrmanns decisions was actually quite interesting - his heart was certainly in the right place - but lets not keep this film and the novel in the same universe. What Luhrmann has realised is how much times have changed since the jazz age, and how making a film with the same sensibilities as the novel wouldnt have got him the audience, nor boosted F. Scott Fitzgeralds novel back into Top 10 glory. Perhaps a subtle film by Sofia Coppola with jazz music would have been in a closer range to the novel, but Luhrmanns film is truly something different. Where else would you get a 3D 1920s set film with people riding in cars to some hip hop tunes? You can either take a glass half full or glass half empty approach: I think The Great Gatsby is about as fresh as you can get in a blockbuster. Not perfect, but lets just say it is a damn fine rose in amongst some rusty franchise thorns.



Then again, thats just my teenaged heart acting up. Every day is Leo-Mania for me.

Available link for download

Bigg Boss 10 Bani J and Gaurav Chopra Turn Villains Against Housemates !

After the exit or throwing out of Priyanka Jagga from Bigg Boss 10 house, the house is in need of a new villain. And the news is that the house got not only one but two in the name of Bani J and Gaurav Chopra. In this blog piece by CRB Tech Reviews we tell you what actually happened.


 Bigg Boss gave a new task that was solely dependent on Bani and Gaurav, who were called inside the confession room and told that they gonna have a live chat with the viewers of the popular TV reality show. But the truth was something different; they were actually answering the questions that were given to them not by viewers, but the other housemates. One question that was asked to both was what they think about their fellow contestants. While Bani targeted her enemy Lopamudra Raut and said she couldn’t accept her apology and she doesn’t want to know her as a person.

Available link for download

Biogen Launches Submarine Patent against Competing Providers of Interferon Beta Products

Biogen sells AVONEX, an interferon-beta product used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis. On May 27, Biogen filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Pfizer, Serono, Bayer (formerly known as Berlex) and Novartis for the production and sale of the competing interferon-beta products REBIF, BETASERON and EXTAVIA

Biogens patent, which issued in 2009 and is not due to expire until at least 2026, claims priority to a British patent application filed in 1980. This is a classic example of what many would refer to as a "submarine patent”: not only does the term of the patent extend nearly 50 years after the original filing date, but the patent application was not published prior to issuance of the patent in 2009, and thus the public had no notice that this potentially blockbuster patent was pending in the US patent office.

In this article, I briefly explore the history of the asserted patent, the history of patent litigation involving the marketing of interferon-beta as a protein therapeutic, and some potentially winning arguments the defendants could raise in their defense.

History of a Biotech Submarine Patent

A submarine patent is an informal term used to describe patents which issue without warning many years after the original filing date of the application. Wikipedia has a page devoted to submarine patents, which explains that they typically arise out of two unique aspects of US patent law: (1) a 17 year term that does not start running until the date the patent is issued (only for patents arising out of an application filed prior to June 8, 1995); and (2) the secret status of patent applications that have not been published.

Prior to November 29, 2000, US patent applications were not published unless and until the application resulted in an issued patent. Even today, an applicant for US patent can choose not to allow the PTO to publish its application so long as the applicant does not seek patent protection outside the US. Without publication, the public has no notice that the application is pending in the patent office, and thus no warning prior to the issuance of the resulting patent. Some have proposed amending US patent law to require publication of all patent applications 18 months after filing, but as of yet this is just a proposal.

Submarine patents are also fostered by relatively loose continuation rules in the US, which permit an applicant to keep a patent application pending virtually indefinitely, and to freely amend the claims to encompass previously unclaimed subject matter (so long as the later claimed subject matter is adequately disclosed in the application as filed). In a previous post, I discussed the relationship between continuation practice and late claiming, and my suspicion that restrictions on continuation practice proposed by the patent office a couple years ago were largely intended to address perceived abuses of continuation practice.

A few years ago, Mark Lemley (Stanford law professor) and Kimberly Moore (currently a judge on the Federal Circuit, but at the time a law professor) wrote a law review article complaining that some patent applicants, particularly pharmaceutical companies, were abusing continuation practice to extend patent protection beyond the statutory term, a practice they refer to as "evergreening." They would likely point to Biogens patent as an example of what they consider to be abusive continuation practice.

Biogen’s patent, US patent number 7,588,755, arose out of a patent application filed by Walter Fiers in April of 1981 (and claiming priority to a British application filed in April of 1980), which disclosed, among other things, the DNA sequence for the gene encoding interferon-beta, methods of using the gene to produce recombinant interferon-beta protein, and use of the interferon beta protein as a biologic drug for the treatment of cancer and viral conditions. The core claims, directed to the gene itself, became involved in a three-way patent interference, which eventually went before the Federal Circuit and in 1993 resulted in Fiers v. Revel, a seminal biotech patent decision that proved instrumental in the creation of what is often referred to as the "Lilly written description requirement" (the subject of the recent Ariad v. Lilly decision).

In Fiers v. Revel, the Federal Circuit affirmed the boards decision in favor of Sugano, the Japanese party to the interference, and thus denying Fiers a patent on the gene itself. Sugano’s patent on claiming the gene (5,326,859) issued on July 5, 1994, and assuming no patent term extension should expire July 5, 2011, more than 30 years after the patent application was initially filed. In this case, the long pendency between filing date and patent issuance can largely be attributed to the time consumed by the interference proceeding. According to USPTO records, Sugano’s patent is assigned to the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, and has never been asserted in a lawsuit.

Although Fiers lost the battle, he did not necessarily lose the war. Denied patent coverage of the gene itself, he took advantage of continuation practice and on May 25, 1995, filed a divisional application claiming priority to the 1980 British patent application. Note that the application was filed just in time to still qualify for a 17 year from date of issuance term; if the application had been filed a few weeks later it would have been subject to a 20 year term from the date the original application was filed, and thus no patent could have issued having a term extending beyond 2001.

The patent ultimately issued on September 15, 2009, with claims essentially reciting methods of using recombinantly produced interferon-beta for “immunomodulation or treating a viral conditions, a viral disease, cancers or tumors." Because the divisional application was filed prior to June 8, 1995, it was granted a 17 year term starting on the date of issuance, resulting in a patent term (assuming no extensions) that will not expire until September 15, 2026, more than 46 years after the patent application was initially filed in Great Britain.

It bears emphasizing that this sort of long delay between filing date and patent expiration is only possible for patent applications filed prior to June 8, 1995. But this case illustrates that some of these applications are still pending, and in cases where the application has not been published there is no public notice of the potential landmine that might explode for companies like Bayer and Novartis at any time.

Note that in some ways the method of treatment patent obtained by Biogen is potentially more valuable than Sugano’s gene patent. The gene patent could be circumvented by producing the interferon-beta product outside of the US, and then importing it into the US. Use of the gene outside of the US, and importation of the protein product, would not infringe a patent limited to the gene itself. In contrast, Fiers method of treatment patent could be infringed by a company selling interferon-beta in the US, regardless of where it is produced.

Furthermore, because of the long delay between the interference and the issuance of Fiers’ method of treatment patent, the term of the patent extends 15 years beyond the term of Sugano’s gene patent. Assuming that the market for interferon-beta as a therapeutic has expanded over time, the 17 years covered by Fiers’ patent is more valuable than Sugano’s 17 year term.

As an aside, note also that Sugano’s gene patent is invalid according to the holding of a recent district court decision in the ACLU challenge to Myriad’s BRCA gene patents, although I feel fairly confident that that decision will not stand (as discussed here).

Previous interferon-beta patent litigation

This is not the first patent infringement lawsuit between these parties involving interferon-beta. On July 3, 1996, Biogen filed a declaratory judgment action against Bayer (at that time Berlex) seeking a declaration that Berlex patents claiming methods for the recombinant production of interferon in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells were not infringed by Biogens method of producing its interferon-beta product (AVONEX). A district court granted summary judgment in Biogens favor, finding no infringement.

While the case was on appeal to the Federal Circuit, the parties entered a settlement agreement allowing Biogen to stay on the market, pursuant to which Biogen agreed to pay Berlex $20 million upfront and an additional $55 million if the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling granting summary judgment in Biogen’s favor (the litigation and settlement are discussed in my article on human gene patent litigation, available here). Ultimately, the Federal Circuit affirmed the lower courts decision that Biogen did not literally infringe Berlex’s patents, but remanded the case to the district court to determine whether there was infringement under the doctrine of equivalents (Biogen v. Berlex, 318 F.3d 1132 (Fed. Cir. 2003)). However, as a result of the settlement the district court never had to decide the issue of eivalent infringement.

Potential Weaknesses in Biogen’s Case

I can imagine a couple of potential avenues by which the defendants in this case might escape liability for infringement of Biogen’s patent. For one thing, the primary use of interferon-beta products is in the treatment of multiple sclerosis. But the only independent claim in the patent recites a "method for immunomodulation or treating a viral conditions, a viral disease, cancers or tumors comprising the step of administering to the patient in need of such treatment a therapeutically effective amount of a composition comprising [recombinantly expressed interferon-beta].” A court would likely only find this claim infringed by use of interferon-beta in the immunomodulation or treatment of "viral conditions, viral diseases, cancers or tumors."

Clearly, MS is not a tumor or cancer, and to my knowledge it has not been established that it is caused by a virus. For example, an article on the website WebMD entitled Multiple Sclerosis: What Causes It? States that “[d]octors still dont understand what causes MS, but there are interesting data that suggest that genetics, a persons environment, and possibly even a virus may play a role.” The patent owner bears the legal burden of proving infringement, and without some fairly persuasive evidence showing that MS is a viral disease, I think that Biogen might have difficulty proving infringement.

There is also the issue of prosecution latches. In Symbol Technologies v. Lemelson, the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower courts determination that certain patents were unenforceable for unreasonable delays in the prosecution of the patent. In that case, the lag between filing date and patent issuance for the patents in suit ranged from 18 to 39 years.

Earlier this year, in Cancer Research Technology v. Barr Laboratories, Inc., 679 F.Supp.2d 560 (D.Del.,2010), a district court cited Symbol Technologies in ruling that a drug patent was unenforceable based on nine years of delay in prosecution.

In this case, Biogen’s patent issued about 28 years after the initial 1981 US filing date. The patent interference was limited to claims directed towards the gene itself, not claims to the method of treatment which ultimately issued in the patent, so I dont think Biogen will be able to point to the interference as an excuse for the 28 year delay. In any event, I think it is likely Biogen will need to provide some justification for the long delay or risk having its patent ruled unenforceable.

Available link for download