The objective of this project is to gain a deeper understanding of the growing global politics about the role of the patent system in contemporary societies, by comparing the controversies over patenting biotechnology in the United States and Europe. In recent years, as patents have become central to innovation processes that are considered integral to the health of national and regional economies, the patent system has also become a major forum for clashes over many pressing global public policy issues. At street protests against the World Trade Organization, in meeting rooms at the European Patent Office, and many places in between, critics are demanding that intellectual property regimes must change to take into account the ethical and social implications of their decisions, including the consequences of trade liberalization for the developing world, the rights of citizens to affordable health care, the commodification of life and ethical boundaries of markets, and the limits of free scientific inquiry. Defenders of the status quo, meanwhile, argue that the patent office is not an appropriate venue for such questions; it is a space where inventors are given a right to exclude others from manufacturing an invention, and has no control over whether or how an invention is actually used. This project addresses whether and how political context influences the shape and substance of these challenges, the implications of these challenges for the status and legitimacy of patent offices, and whether and how patent offices can be structured to address these concerns. The investigator poses the following questions:
1) How do the shapes of these debates vary between the United States and Europe? Do they vary in terms of their themes, their participants, and the winners and losers?
2) If these debates vary, then why? Can these differences be explained in terms of political structures or cultures, or in the context of the broader battles over biotechnology and intellectual property rights that are occurring in both contexts?
3) How do the participants in these debates envision the patent office''s role, in terms of knowledge production, its jurisdiction (national, regional, or global), the relationship between science and markets, and the configuration of social and moral orders?
4) What alternative methods are critics proposing to incorporate ethical and social considerations into patent office deliberations? Are any of these politically, economically, and socially feasible?
5) Can the politics in this domain teach us anything about whether and how we can incorporate ethical or social concerns into science and technology policymaking in other contexts?
The investigator addresses these questions by using qualitative research methods, including interviews, ethnographic observation, and document analysis. In addition to characterizing, in a broad sense, the biotechnology patenting debates that have occurred over the past 30 years, the investigator organizes the analysis by focusing on controversies over four types of biotechnology patents that cover the breadth of issues that are being debated in this arena. The investigator will choose among patents covering human embryonic stem cells, disease genes, higher life forms including animals, indigenous knowledge, and genetically modified organisms.
This study is relevant to scholarship in the fields of science and technology studies, bioethics, and public policy. It contributes to the growing body of research on the comparative politics of biotechnology, and it also facilitates our understanding of the shape, politics, and stability of organizations that operate in the world of science and technology policy. Furthermore, the project provides insight into whether and how ethical and social concerns can be incorporated into both patent policy and science and technology policy in other contexts.
