When the Bush administration came in and Todd Dickinson left his post as director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, there were approximately 10,000 outstanding gene-based patent applications. Early patents of this type tended to be full-length sequences; now, most focus on ESTs or SNPs. Since April, Dickinson hangs his shingle at the law firm Howrey Simon Arnold and White, where he’s a partner dealing with IP. GT’s Meredith Salisbury caught up with him to find out about guidelines, evaluations, and patent pooling.