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Wallace, Helen; Mayer, Sue --- "Scientific Research Agendas: Controlled and Shaped by the Scope of Patentability" [2007] ELECD 161; in Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector (eds), "Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845428747

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Scientific Research Agendas: Controlled and Shaped by the Scope of Patentability

Author(s): Wallace, Helen; Mayer, Sue

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

13. Scientific research agendas: controlled
and shaped by the scope of
patentability
Helen Wallace and Sue Mayer

1 INTRODUCTION
Recent controversies surrounding intellectual property rights (IPRs) and patent-
ing have included whether discoveries about nature, such as gene sequences,
should be patentable; whether innovation is stimulated or stifled by the extension
of IPRs; and how benefits should be shared in situations where biological mate-
rial or knowledge from a particular area underpins the claimed `invention'.
These debates have focused on how the monopolistic rights granted in `patents
on life' restrict scientists' or patients' access to new biological discoveries or
their applications and whether they disproportionately reward companies which
claim patents based on the results of shared scientific discovery or indigenous
knowledge.1
In this chapter, we explore a different and neglected issue which concerns the
effects of patenting on the scientific research agenda. We argue that scientific
knowledge that can be made the subject of a patent application is being favoured
above the acquisition of other knowledge. It is thus not only access to biological
discoveries that is controlled and shaped by the patent system, but what consti-
tutes scientific knowledge itself. Because knowledge in the `knowledge-based
economy' is defined by what can be patented and marketed, the `public domain'
of knowledge about human, animal and plant biology is not just becoming less
public; it is also changing shape. We argue that this is having a negative effect
on innovation in public health and agricultural systems which may have ...