More from Patents on Life conference

University of Virginia law professor Margo Bagley presented biblical insights on misappropriation in life science patenting.  She discussed the passage from Leviticus that instructs landowners not to reap to the edges of the field, leaving some food for the poor.  Any lessons for our law today? Our legal prohibition on "stealing" self-replicating inventions (e.g. landowners sued by patent-holder after neighbor's GMO plant seeds drift onto their land) can seem unjust because there is no de minimis exception.  Stealing pharmaceutical products is also thorny -- Thailand exercised TRIPs rights and issued compulsory licenses on several drugs.  Abbot responded that Thailand would not receive new drugs. Many countries didn't grant pharmaceutical products until relatively recently. Margo offered data on pharmaceutical companies' expenditures on research/development and sales/marketing --the latter being higher -- and profit margins (higher than other major industries).  Question today is: who's stealing from whom?

Michael Kock, Global Head of IP at Syngenta, discussed the ethical use of patents in plant innovations. He noted that the world must produce more food in the next fifty years than it has in the last 10,000 years. Every second, the world loses on football field of farmland due to urbanization and erosion. Climate change is also affecting agricultural production in some regions. He pointed out that carrots are orange only because breeders created an orange carrot in the nineteenth century. Other than some mushrooms and berries, all crops have been changed by humans -- none are "natural." So how much genetic interference is acceptable? Plant variety protection through conventional breeding is generally accepted but plant variety protection does not protect specific attribute, just entire plant variety.  We have an increasing need for innovation and increasing need for investment given technical complexity compared to traditional breeding. Can we minimize the problematic effects of a patent on life without losing the benefits? New international licensing platform shows promise -- "free access but not access for free."  The platform is based on fair pricing, MFN principle, transparency, "pull-in effect" (if you want access, you have to grant access to your inventions). Voluntary efforts such as the licensing platform, though, may not be sufficient.

University of Illinois law professor Paul Heald presented a sociological history of religious objections to patenting life, asking: why is there no significant religious objection to patenting life in the U.S.?  One major reason is the rise of Christian libertarianism and Christian materialism. Business interests succeeded in convincing Americans that business interests and Christian interests overlap. Because patent rights are property rights, criticizing patent rights is akin to criticizing property rights.  There have been a few statements made, but they failed to gain traction.  There are high information costs in developing an educated position, and this is a relatively low-priority issue for American Christians compared to abortion, the death penalty, etc. Even within the world of corporate agricultural practices, this may not be the most pressing issue; what's more of a problem: seed patents or the seed company's corruption of lending practices in developing countries (forcing local farmers to buy expensive patented seeds by persuading banks not to lend to farmers unless they use the advanced seed technology)?