About

Jacob Sherkow is a law professor at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, focusing on intellectual property and medical therapies, agency regulation, and the legal and ethical issues attendant to advanced biotechnologies. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 articles and essays, two books on COVID-19 innovation policy, four book chapters, and many op-eds. His work explores how the structuring of property and regulatory regimes can produce the best medicines for the most people, often using case studies to reveal situations where scientific practice is misaligned with legal rules or the realities of litigation. Sherkow's recent research was funded through a grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore legal improvements to genomic privacy and security technologies developed at Illinois. He holds faculty appointments at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the European Union Center, and has advised major scientific organizations on bioethical issues. In 2018, he was appointed to the National Academy of Medicine as an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar and currently serves as an academic advisor to the academy’s Committee on Emerging Science, Technology and Innovation. Sherkow routinely advises governments and commercial entities on patents and biotechnology, including counseling investment firms, engaging with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, working with the World Health Organization, and advising the French National Assembly. He is also an accomplished teacher, frequently earning recognition from students, and serves on the editorial board of the CRISPR Journal.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Law
• Engineering ethics
• Environmental science
• Environmental resource management
• Public relations
• Ecology
• Environmental ethics
• Genetics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Drug Labels as Evidence of Patent Infringement — A Troubling Legal Trend

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2026-02-07

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Intellectual Property, New Genomic Technologies And Plant Innovation: Clearing Innovation Pathways

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A “Bare Hope of A Result”: The Second CRISPR Patent Appeal

  The CRISPR Journal · 2025-09-30

  article1st authorCorresponding

  On May 12, 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its second decision in the long-running CRISPR patent dispute between the Regents of the University of California and related institutions (CVC) and the Broad Institute. This Perspective recounts the principal dispute to date, reviews the Federal Circuit's recent opinion, and provides a critique of its analysis. In particular, this Perspective highlights how the decision is self-contradictory and in tension with patent law's conception doctrine-when an inventor has formed a "definite and permanent" idea of an invention in the mind or whether the invention was little more than a "bare hope" of a result. This Perspective briefly concludes with the implications of this recent decision and where the underlying dispute is likely headed.

  PublisherDOI

• A sociotechnical approach to genomic data privacy: a comparative analysis

  International Data Privacy Law · 2025-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The sharing of genomic data across international borders presents significant privacy law challenges.Secured computed environments on smartphones allow the storing and processing of sensitive data without the underlying data being shared with processors.A novel technology, described here, to process genomic data within a secured computing environment seems to comport with EU and US privacy laws, despite their differing aims and rules.This technology suggests there may be technological solutions to privacy law fragmentation across jurisdictions, so long as data subjects socially trust the technology and have control over their data.

  PublisherDOI

• Infringement by Drug Label

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Myriad Decision at 10

  Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics · 2024-02-29 · 3 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A decade ago, the US Supreme Court decided Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. , concluding that isolated genes were not patentable subject matter. Beyond being a mere patent dispute, the case was a political and cultural phenomenon, viewed as a harbinger for the health of the biotechnology industry. With a decade of perspective, though, Myriad 's impact seems much narrower. The law surrounding patentable subject matter—while greatly transformed—only centered on Myriad in small part. The case had only a modest impact on patenting practices both in and outside the United States. And persistent efforts to legislatively overturn the decision have not borne fruit. The significance of Myriad thus remains, even a decade later, hidden by larger developments in science and law that have occurred since the case was decided.

  PublisherDOI

• Regulating Direct-to-Consumer Polygenic Risk Scores

  Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey · 2024-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  (Abstracted from JAMA 2023;330:691–692) Polygenic risk scores (PGSs) are genome-wide measurements of an individual's genetic propensities or predispositions, and tests have been recently made more accessible and results more available to consumers. With most genetic tests, a healthcare provider helps consumers to interpret results as they relate to medical conditions, but more and more frequently direct-to-consumer PGSs (DTC-PGS) are unregulated.

  PublisherDOI

• Neurotechnology and Noninvasive Neuromodulation: Case Study for Understanding and Anticipating Emerging Science and Technology

  NAM Perspectives · 2023-11-15 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Myth of DNA Trade Secrets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Innovation Law and COVID-19

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-10-27 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  This chapter considers how innovation policy and health law – including food and drug regulation, healthcare reimbursement, and direct R&D subsidies – have both encouraged and impeded the development and allocation of new technologies in the fight against COVID-19. First, an expansive diagnostic testing program for COVID-19 is critical both to slow the spread of the disease and to ensure that future outbreaks can be detected early. The disastrous US testing response represents both an individual regulatory failure and a failure of coordination among agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). On the treatment side, drugmakers have rushed to identify new and existing compounds for potential COVID-19 efficacy against the backdrop of potentially lengthy and expensive clinical trials. In response, the FDA has granted Emergency Use Authorizations for several of these drugs, which requires balancing risks and harms on only minimal evidence. The intersection between incentives and regulatory oversight has profoundly shaped the innovation landscape for new COVID-19 treatments, such as by permitting widespread use in ways that do not improve the evidence base about which therapeutics are most effective. Finally, extinguishing COVID-19 will require the development of a broadly effective vaccine. This is an opportunity to develop and implement novel ex post rewards, including reimbursement incentives per vaccination to promote vaccine uptake. Each of these areas reveals important lessons to help policymakers better prepare for the next pandemic.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Eli Y. Adashi

  Brown University

  49 shared

• I. Glenn Cohen

  Harvard University

  42 shared

• Henry T. Greely

  Stanford University

  30 shared

• Christopher Thomas Scott

  Baylor College of Medicine

  20 shared

• Patricia J. Zettler

  The Ohio State University

  19 shared

• Marie‐Paule Lefranc

  18 shared

• Robert Cook‐Deegan

  Arizona State University

  17 shared

• Debra Mathews

  16 shared

Education

• J.D., Law

  University of Michigan

• B.Sc., Biology

  McGill University

• M.A., Biology

  Columbia University