My guests today are Andrew Gilden, Southwestern Law School, and Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec, William & Mary Law School. They join me today to discuss their recent paper, Patenting the Taboo: Sex, Drugs, and Abortion, recently published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. It’s a really fun article that looks at patent applications in three taboo spaces: sexual pleasure, illicit drugs, and abortion technologies. Some of the themes are very similar to ones Andrew Jennings and I highlight in our recent paper, Vice Capital, in which we interview founders and investors in these same spaces. I highly recommend their paper, even if you don’t have a particular interest or expertise in patent law.

Show Notes

About Andrew Gilden

About Sarah Rajec

About Kim Krawiec

Gilden, Andrew, and Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec. "Patenting the Taboo: Sex, Drugs, and Abortion." Yale Journal of Law and Technology, forthcoming (2025).

Gilden, Andrew, and Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec. "Pleasure Patents." BCL Rev. 63 (2022): 571.

Jennings, Andrew K., and Kimberly D. Krawiec. "Vice Capital." UC Irvine Law Review 15 (2025): 427.

My student co-hosts sign off, bringing Season 6 to an official close. Never fear, I'll be back throughout 2026 with exciting bonus episodes.

My guest today is Diane Tober, an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology and Institute for Social Science Research. She is a medical anthropologist with a focus on biocultural aspects of health, gender and sexuality, the commodification of the body, science and technology studies, bioethics, and social and reproductive justice. She has been conducting research exploring egg donors’ decisions and experiences within the global market for human eggs since 2013. She joins us today to discuss her recent book, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them (Routledge 2024). This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law 2Ls, Rachel Duffy and Rachel Greenbaum.

Show Notes

About Diane Tober

About Kim Krawiec

About Rachel Duffy

About Rachel Greenbaum

Diane Tober, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them (Routledge 2024)

Kimberly D. Krawiec, Gametes: Commodification and The Fertility Industry, in Routledge Handbook of Commodification, Routledge, 278–289 (1 ed. 2023).

Krawiec, Kimberly D. "Markets, repugnance, and externalities." Journal of Institutional Economics 19.6 (2023): 944-955.