Patenting Lives

Patenting Lives. Life Patents, Culture and Development Gibson, J. (ed.) Hampshire: Ashgate

Intellectual property (IP) is a hot issue now, just as land as property was 400 years ago with the beginning of capitalism. Does this mean that we are indeed in a new phase of modernity, in which knowledge is becoming a commodity? The international struggles over IP started, however, with very different stakeholders, like worlddominating governments and huge (mostly pharmaceutical) companies. W...

Patenting of Genetic Inventions

The genetic inventions in the patent system are similar to chemical inventions. Genetic inventions that are patentable include genetic materials such as DNA, RNA, cDNA, EST’s (Expressed Sequence Tags), SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphs) and recombinant vectors. These inventions need to satisfy the criteria of patentability such as novelty, nonobviousness, utility, enablement and sufficiency of...

Patenting the human genome.

Patenting computer-designed peptides.

The problem of designing new peptides that possess specific properties, such as bactericidal activity, is of wide interest. Recently, attention has focused on the use of Computer-Aided Molecular Design techniques in parallel with more traditional 'synthesise and test' methods. These techniques may typically use Genetic Algorithms to optimise molecules based on Neural Network models that predict...

Patenting Human Evolution

Genetic engineering is an utterly transformative technology. It allows humans to alter genomes with both immediacy and precision, creating as its product organisms possessing novel combinations of genes. Where multiple generations of selective breeding of pets, livestock, and crops have long yielded organisms whose genes suited them well to human purposes, such as tameness, obedience, protein c...