Getgen, who works with students at Cornell Law School, said strained legal aid organizations and nonprofits will want to take in the "free" labor.

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"I worry that the announcement will be implemented more stingily than the administration would like, " said Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration law at Cornell Law School.

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But a Cornell Law School scholar suggests the court should take another approach, one that has been around for at least 250 years over another type of intellectual property that is strikingly similar to a gene sequence: Charts and maps.

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Michael Dorf of Cornell University Law School offers a few tips.

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