Frazer v. Schlegel (2007)

On 20 August 2007, in Frazer v. Schlegel, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided that researchers Ian Frazer and Jian Zhou owned the rights to the vaccine patent for Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, instead of a research team led by Richard Schlegel. Frazer v. Schlegel reversed the decision that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences had previously made, awarding the patent to Schlegel on the basis that Frazer’s patent application contained inaccurate science. However, once appealed, the Federal Circuit judges found Frazer’s science to be accurate, granting him rights to the vaccine patent. In 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, approved the first HPV vaccine, which has since been effective in protecting women from cervical cancer by up to ninety-seven percent if they were vaccinated before contracting HPV. The Circuit’s decision gave Frazer ownership of the patent for the HPV vaccine, which physicians have administered over 120 million doses of to people in the US.