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the subject of uncertainty. In other cases, the biological mechanism will be mysterious or misunderstood, and the conception of the invention may require unique insights into the biological source of the disorder. The latter class of inventions is by far the most challenging to develop and perfect; all pharmaceutical inventions require the selection, testing, and possible modification of a bioactive compound, but not all require extensive original research into human or other animal biochemical functioning. Yet, because the claims will typically recite only the chemical structure of the molecule, an inflexible Trovan-type analysis would arbitrarily privilege the second and fifth steps over the others, despite the fact that in any given case the former may require the least effort, expertise, creativity, or other inventive contribution. 233 2. Restoring Incentives for Collaborative Research Claim fixation results in an inventorship analysis obviously inequitable to the excluded inventors, but it also poses a threat to collaborative research. Often, private companies seek to collaborate with university scientists and engineers to develop innovative products. For example, drug developers frequently collaborate with university biologists and chemists to discover diagnostics and treatments for persistent human diseases and disorders. University researchers are typically involved in exploring human or other animal biology or biochemistry, while the drug companies have expertise in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology. In such collaboration, Trovan analysis seems to suggest that the university researchers could never qualify as inventors if they did not contribute some specific molecular arrangement to the claimed compound. The patent incentive to collaboration with drug companies disappears. An interesting illustration of the flaws in Trovan analysis occurred in a previously mentioned case, Board of Education ex rel. Florida State University v. American Bioscience. 234 There, FSU scientists and their post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Tao, had been experimenting with variants of paclitaxel, a naturally-occurring 233
For example, the fifth step typically requires repeated recourse to the system developed in step 4, in order to verify that the modifications of the molecule perform the function desired in an acceptable manner. In any given case, the inventors may be able to use a prior art, off-the-shelf assay system to test and modify a nonobvious compound, or they may have to develop a nonobvious system for testing and modifying a prior art compound. Either step may constitute a valid contribution to conception. 234 Bd. of Educ. ex rel. Bd. Of Trustees of Fla. State Univ. v. Am. Bioscience, Inc., 333 F.3d 1330 (Fed. Cir. 2003).