Andrew Torrance

Biography

Andrew W. Torrance is the Paul E. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Graduate and International Law at the University of Kansas School of Law, and a winner of a 2015 University Scholarly Achievement Award at the University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1997, J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2000, and Bachelor of Science from Queen’s University (Canada) in 1991. He joined the University of Kansas School of Law in 2005 as Associate Professor. In 2009, he was named a Docking Faculty Scholar, a university-wide program that honors faculty members who have distinguished themselves in their early careers, and in 2011 he was promoted to tenured Full Professor. He is a former Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor. At KU, Torrance served as a member of the Faculty and University Executive Councils (2010-2013), and as the elected President of the Faculty Senate (2012-2013).

Prior to his arrival at KU, Torrance taught at Harvard University as Eliot House Resident Tutor in Biology and Law (1993-2000), Tutor in Biology (1999-2005), and Hrdy Visiting Professor of Conservation Biology (2003). In addition, he has been a Fellow in Law, Innovation, and Growth at the Searle Center at Northwestern University Law School (2009-2010), a Manza Scholar at the DePaul University College of Law School (2010), a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington School of Law (2011-2012), a Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (2014), and a Visiting Scholar in Behavioral and Policy Sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 2011. In 2008, Torrance served as a policy advisor to presidential candidate Barack H. Obama on his Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Committee.

Torrance teaches and conducts research in patent law, intellectual property, innovation, food and drug regulation, biotechnology law, biodiversity law, biolaw, and empirical, experimental, and big data approaches to the law. Specific research foci include open, user, and collaborative innovation, design, and legal issues surrounding genes, biotechnology, genetically modified organisms, synthetic biology, conservation biology, and de-extinction.

Torrance has given more than 100 scholarly presentations at numerous universities, research organizations, governments, and intergovernmental agencies in seven countries. His invited presentations have included a Google TechTalk at Google’s main Mountain View campus in California (posted on the Google TechTalk channel as “The Patent Game: Experiments in the Cathedral of Law”), a research talk at Microsoft Research in Seattle, two speeches at the Organization for Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) at their Paris, France, headquarters, keynote addresses for Genome Canada and the European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP) annual conference, and two presentations to the National Academies in Washington, D.C. Torrance has published more than 25 scholarly works. His scholarship has appeared in such journals as the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, the Stanford Technology Law Review, the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review and the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. He was commissioned in 2012 to write a report for the National Academies. Torrance and his research have been regularly featured in the media, including NPR, Forbes, the Seattle Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Torrance practiced biotechnology patent law at Fish & Richardson PC, the world’s largest intellectual property law firm, after working as a summer associate at both Morrison & Foerster LLC and Fish & Richardson P.C. He served as in-house patent counsel at Inverness Medical Innovations, a global biotechnology company with headquarters in Boston, and as the first in-house patent counsel at Stirling Medical Innovations, a cardiac diagnostics biotechnology company based in Scotland. He is a board member at several companies and nonprofit organizations. Torrance founded the annual Biolaw Conference, and co-founded the leading annual patent conference, PatCon. Torrance led the intellectual property department at the Eli and Edythe Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard from August 2019 to December 2020.

Extended bio

Andrew W. Torrance joined the KU Law faculty in 2005 and, in 2009, was named a Docking Faculty Scholar, a university-wide program established with a gift from the late Mrs. Meredith Docking to honor faculty members who have distinguished themselves in their early careers. He was also a 2009-10 Fellow in Law, Innovation and Growth at the Searle Center at Northwestern University Law School. In August of 2010, Torrance was invited by Google Inc. to give a Google TechTalk at Google’s main Mountain View campus in California; Google posted his entire presentation, “The Patent Game: Experiments in the Cathedral of Law,” on its YouTube Google TechTalk channel. Torrance is often featured by prominent news outlets, including Forbes the Seattle Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. See below for a complete list of his media appearances. He received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1997 and is a 2000 graduate of Harvard Law School. He earned his Bachelor of Science from Queen’s University in Canada. In 2003, he was named the Hrdy Visiting Professor of Conservation Biology at Harvard University and taught Biodiversity: Science, Policy, and Law at Harvard University from 1999 until his arrival at KU.

Torrance practiced biotechnology patent law at Fish and Richardson PC, the world’s largest intellectual property law firm, after working as a summer associate at both Morrison & Foerster LLC and Fish & Richardson P.C. Next, he served as inhouse patent counsel at Inverness Medical Innovations, a global biotechnology company with headquarters in Boston, and helped start Stirling Medical Innovations, a cardiac diagnostics biotechnology company based in Scotland. He has presented his research across the United States, as well as in Canada, Finland, Scotland, England, France and Germany. His articles have been published in journals such as the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, and the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy. Several of his articles have been listed on SSRN (Social Science Research Network) Top Ten Lists. In the spring of 2009, Torrance was invited to present his research to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) at OECD Headquarters in Paris.

Since 2007, Torrance has run Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology, an annual conference that gathers leading scholars at KU Law to present their insights on the latest developments in biolaw. His interests in biology have led to research expeditions to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, Banks Island in the Canadian High Arctic, and the Caribbean islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John, Jost van Dyke and Tortola. He has served as chairman of the Scientific and Creative Board of the Darwin Project, a major biodiversity institution planned for downtown Boston, is a member of the board of East Wind Power, and has assisted the BioBricks Foundation (BBF).

Torrance's research interests include intellectual property, patent law, innovation law, biotechnology, biolaw, food and drug law, biodiversity law, climate change law, and international environmental law. He teaches classes in intellectual property law, patent law, food and drug law, and biodiversity law. He served as marshall at the law school's December 2008 hooding ceremony after being elected for the role by the graduating class.

Torrance was featured with Princeton geneticist Lee Silver in a Kansas Public Radio story about the emergence of biolaw as an academic field, was quoted in the Salina Journal on the subject of intellectual property protection of genetically modified crops, and was commissioned by the magazine BioIT World to analyze the ACLU’s lawsuit to overturn Myriad Genetics’ patents covering genetic tests for diagnosing susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education referenced the Patent Game project that Torrance is collaborating on with William Tomlinson at the University of California-Irvine. Recently, he has been quoted extensively in the Kansas City Star ("Patent lawyers give your big idea an edge"), the Chicago Lawyer ("Bringing predictability to the patent world"), the San Francisco Chronicle ("Patents' growing role in battle of mobile"), and Dow Jones Newswires ("Biogen sues MS drug makers, citing Avonex patent"). The National Public Radio station KCUR broadcast an interview with Torrance ("Legal roadblocks to copyrighting natural remedies") on its program "KC Currents." Torrance was quoted in an ABC 49 News story about the Westboro Baptist Church being under fire for potential copyright infringement for its parody of the song "We Are the World" and in the Seattle Times on the use of patents as a strategy for technology companies.

Education

• J.D., Harvard Law School, 2000
• Ph.D. in Biology, Harvard University, 1997
• A.M. in Biology, Harvard University, 1994
• B.Sc. in Biology, Queen’s University, 1991

Research

• Intellectual property
• Patent law
• Innovation law
• Biotechnology
• Biolaw
• Food and drug law
• Biodiversity law
• Climate change law
• International environmental law

Teaching

• Intellectual Property Law, Patent Law, Food and Drug Law, Biodiversity Law, Biolaw, Legal Analytics