Physician and Pharmacist Liability: Medicolegal Cases That are Tough Pills to Swallow

We present four medicolegal cases involving medication errors, which led to patient harm and subsequent settlements or jury awards to patients. These cases each involved scenarios in which a medication was inappropriately prescribed and/or inappropriately dispensed. In such cases, it is often not obvious whether the physician or pharmacist is at fault. These cases highlight the importance of understanding the roles and responsibilities of the physician and pharmacist in medication prescription and dispensation.

Study Proposal: Commercial Patent Licensing Data

There is currently a lack of freely-accessible public information regarding patentlicensing practices. While some commercial services seek to compile patentlicensing data from public sources such as trial records and filings withgovernmental agencies, access to these databases is not free and, to ourunderstanding, these databases do not claim to contain comprehensiveinformation on confidential licensing transactions. The lack of public informationregarding patent licensing practices, particularly royalty rates, has led to widelydivergent jury awards in patent damages cases. It has also stymied productivediscussions among scholars, policy makers and regulators regarding theeconomic impact of patent law rules and potential policy changes.