Patents on Life: Morality-based exclusions under patent law

Dr. Kathleen Liddell, director of the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences at Cambridge University, addressed the exclusion of "immoral" inventions from patent law.  In addition to discussing potential levers for improving current law, she raised questions that must be resolved. When we're proposing morality-based exclusions, are we focusing on the morality of performing the technology itself (e.g. letter bombs), the morality of granting patent rights (e.g. life-saving drugs), the morality of patenting an invention based on unethical research (e.g. embryo-based technologies), or all three?  And is morality determined by a harm-benefit calculation, the fact that granting of the patent would be universally regarded as outrageous, or more modestly, that granting a patent would be contrary to a particular country's norms?

She asked theologians to develop a more nuanced understanding of IP law and realistic opportunities and constraints for ethical/religious touchstones within IP law, and she encouraged IP lawyers to develop a better understanding of epistemologies other than law.