
Professor @UCLaw_SF, Director of @C4iUCLaw, expert on #PatentLaw, #IntellectualProperty, #DrugPricing
San Francisco, CA
Joined July 2015
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In one fell swoop, the FTC has drastically changed the landscape of drug pricing.
For decades, PBM middle players have stood at the center of the drug delivery system, structuring secret deals that drive prices higher for everyone.
The FTC-PBM settlement is the culmination of years of work from both Republican and Democratic administrations, as well as persistent pressure from congressional corners.
The deal is not perfect. But it is an enormous step towards rationalizing an enormously inefficient market.
ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov…
For a decade, social media companies have successfully argued that the algorithm’s choice of what to show users was the same as a newspaper editor’s choice of what articles to run.
Today’s settlement is like holding newspaper editors accountable for printing with toxic ink.
The timing of the settlement keeps CEO Mark Zuckerberg off the witness stand. And it keeps the jury from deliberating a case that was not looking good for Meta. It’s tough to defend a case about harm to children when your own, internal document is titled, “The Young Ones Are the Best Ones.”
npr.org/2026/08/26/nx-s1-594…
If you let your children play in a sandbox next to a pile of AK-47‘s, and something bad happens, the conclusion shouldn’t be that either children or sandboxes are inherently dangerous.
Perhaps it is possible to think more carefully about where you let your children play and how you construct your sandbox.
apnews.com/article/openai-gp…
I spoke to Cade Metz of The New York Times about the sanctions filing requested by major media organizations in their legal battle against OpenAI.
A sanctions motion—which forces the judge to get down in the mud with the parties—is unusual and judges dislike them. tinyurl.com/2rrrw9uc
My recent paper with Seton Hall examines three kinds of frequently “obvious” secondary patents, many of which should not be patentable. The results show that all three are associated with significantly extended periods of monopoly protection.
scholarship.shu.edu/shlr/vol…
62% of the single-API drugs contributing to these patents were fully or partially discontinued, again suggesting product hopping.
“Business happens in the shadow of the law. If companies believe they are at serious risk for large jury verdicts, it may deter these pay-for-delay settlements.”
news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-…
“Without the additional patents allowed in our patent system, the U.S. would be seeing generic versions [of GLP-1s] within a year of the rest of the world, instead of waiting many more years”
nbcnews.com/health/health-ne…
@NBCNews @BerkeleyJr
"[Legally,] I’d frame it this way: do you want to hold libraries responsible for having books on mass shootings, or for having information books available? If not, then do we think these AI models are more like 'libraries' or more like your Cousin Alfie who drove the getaway car?
[We’ve got to] figure out where they are on that spectrum."
youtube.com/watch?v=_q793ALr…
The Mythos wake-up call is a reminder that we must win the AI Race.
Nationalization is never the answer for staying on the cutting edge. Think about whether you would rather walk into the US Post Office or an Apple store. But government-industry cooperation will be key, among other reasons, so that competitors can get into a room together without worrying about antitrust.
maybe this is not yet clear, so let me state it plainly: as of right now Anthropic, and really a small number of individuals at Anthropic, has the capacity to directly attack and cause major damage to the United States Government, China, and generally global superpowers. government agencies like the NSA do not have internal models or defense capabilities that outclass frontier models. if they chose to do so, they could likely exfiltrate top secret information from government systems, gain control over critical infrastructure including military infrastructure, sabotage or modify communications between members of government at the highest level, and potentially carry on activities for some time without detection. the thing about having access to a huge number of zerodays your adversaries don't know about is it gives you a massive asymmetric advantage.
they did not exploit this to gain power or destabilize the world order. they publicly released the information that they had these capabilities and worked to mitigate these flaws. you should be grateful american frontier labs have proven themselves remarkably trustworthy and concerned with the public good. but it's critical you understand we are in a new regime. private entities now have power that directly rivals and impacts the government's monopoly on influence and violence. and anthropic is certainly not the only one, there's little chance OpenAI's internal models are far behind.
this trend will accelerate on virtually every dimension, not slow down. my prediction for how it plays out is the relatively imminent seizure and nationalization of labs by the US government, sometime over the next two years. it's very tough for me to see how they accept the existence of this kind of threat. but this adds a whole new class of governance issues, as then we've handed these extremely wide-reaching capabilities from private entities to public ones.
Peptides are being touted as the fountain of youth, although the jury is still out on their efficacy.
Bringing them into the light could be a good move. The question is whether the FDA can follow up so that consumers aren’t misled and shady producers don’t pop up on the scene.
npr.org/2026/03/26/nx-s1-575…
Some of the biggest pharmacy benefit managers [PBMs] (drug-pricing middlemen) also own the pharmacies that fill prescriptions. A new Tennessee bill, SB 2040, aims to change that. bit.ly/4sGGA3M
Reintroducing competition would be good for everyone in Tennessee. No entity should have the power to hold the state hostage.

