Abstract
Patents on biotech products have a scope that goes well beyond what is covered by the most widely applied ethical justifications of intellectual property. Neither natural rights theory from Locke, nor public interest theory of IP rights justifies the wide scope of legal protection. The article takes human genes as an example, focusing on the component that is not invented but persists as unaltered gene information even in the synthetically produced complementary DNA, the cDNA. It is argued that patent on cDNA holds this information captive, or illegitimately appropriates it in limiting other researchers and inventors’ opportunity to explore new functions and uses based on this non-invented information. A tighter connection between legal IP protection and the use description stated in the patent claim is suggested. By binding protection to the product’s foreseeable functions and use, instead of the product itself and all future uses of it, legitimacy of biotech product patents is restored.
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Notes
This is how they are stated in World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - TRIPS, Art. 27. See WTO TRIPS, Art. 27:1.
They are non-rivalrous in the sense that one person’s use of them does not negatively affect other persons’ availability of the same good.
They appear to separate between product patents and use patents, implying, misleadingly, that the inventor can choose between applying for product patent or use patent. The product patent in fact gives exclusive rights to make, sell or indeed use the invention. The use privilege is common to product patents and process patents, often therefore referred to by the common legal term utility patent. See USPTO (2013).
Reference and quote borrowed from Sagoff (2002): Monsanto Co. v. Rohm and Haas Co. 312 F.Supp.778, 790 (E.D. Pa. 1970), aff’d 456 F.2nd 592 (3rd Cir), cert. Denied 407 U.S. 934 (1972). According to Sagoff the quote expresses an attitude that is no longer prevailing after, as he notes, patents have been issued for DNA, protein, and various cell lines through a “sea change in patent policy” (p. 424).
One can question to what extent the public already possesses this content as a valid argument against allowing patents. It is probably more relevant to point to the lack of inventiveness and utility in merely isolating DNA.
German patent law is however a notable exception. I shall therefore present its purpose-bound patent protection of human DNA below.
See also Rebecca S. Eisenbergs discussion of this particular development in Eisenberg 2002.
Deutscher Bundestag 2003 from the Chapter 3. «Reichweite des Stoffschutzes und ethische Grenzen». This translation and the ones which follow from this chapter are mine unless otherwise indicated.
Translation borrowed from Kilger et al. op. cit.
Mark Sagoff, accurately I believe, observes that the right holders themselves share the utilitarian justification for the patent system: “Industry leaders [..] regard patent policy as serving an entirely utilitarian or economic purpose that has nothing to do with natural property rights”. See Sagoff (2002), p. 421. A look at IP rights intensive corporations’, like pharmaceutical companies, websites will confirm this.
This text is of course written before the Myriad case conclusion.
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Acknowledgments
Ronny Selbæk Myhre and Bjørn Myskja are attendants at my abstract presentation at the 12th World Congress of Bioethics in 2014; the audience, and particularly Erik Christensen, at the 2014 conference sponsored by The Research Council of Norway. The Normative Dimensions of New Technologies was hosted by Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); the Workshop for Practical Philosopy -VERP- at NTNU, in particular Per-Erling Movik and Morten Dahlback.
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Andreassen, T. Ethical reasons for narrowing the scope of biotech patents. Med Health Care and Philos 18, 463–473 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-015-9647-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-015-9647-4