\(
\def\WIPO{World Intellectual Property Organisation}
\)
Gene Cartels : Biotech Patents in the Age of Free Trade
2009
G 16 PAL.G
Available at WIPO Library
Items
Details
Title
Gene Cartels : Biotech Patents in the Age of Free Trade
Author
Description
416 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781848447431 eBook
9781849802451 Print
9781849802451 Print
Alternate Call Number
G 16 PAL.G
Summary
Starting with the 13th century, this book explores how patents have been used as an economic protectionist tool, developing and evolving to the point where thousands of patents have been ultimately granted not over inventions, but over isolated or purified biological materials. DNA, invented by no man and once thought to be ‘free to all men and reserved exclusively to none’, has become cartelised in the hands of multinational corporations. The author questions whether the continuing grant of patents can be justified when they are now used to suppress, rather than promote, research and development in the life sciences. Luigi Palombi demonstrates that patents are about inventions and not isolated biological materials, which consequently have no bona fide purpose in the innovations of biotechnological science. This book will be important reading for anyone who has an interest in the role that patents have played in economic development – particularly historians, economists and scientists. It will also be of great interest to law academics, lawyers, judges and policymakers.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (c. 341-376) and index.
Formatted Contents Note
Foreword
Preface
Part I: Monopolies in the Age of Free Trade
1. The Early History of Anglo-American Patent Systems
2. Patents and their Use in Economic Warfare
3. Patent Monopolies versus Free Trade
4. The Patent Systems of Continental Europe
5. The Internationalization and Harmonization of the Patent Systems Part II: The Patenting of Biological Materials: The Monopolization of Nature
6. The Isolation Contrivance
7. Anything Under the Sun Made by Man
8. The Invention of Nature?
9. Gene Wars
10. Synthetic Biology and a Time for Reflection
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Part I: Monopolies in the Age of Free Trade
1. The Early History of Anglo-American Patent Systems
2. Patents and their Use in Economic Warfare
3. Patent Monopolies versus Free Trade
4. The Patent Systems of Continental Europe
5. The Internationalization and Harmonization of the Patent Systems Part II: The Patenting of Biological Materials: The Monopolization of Nature
6. The Isolation Contrivance
7. Anything Under the Sun Made by Man
8. The Invention of Nature?
9. Gene Wars
10. Synthetic Biology and a Time for Reflection
Bibliography
Index
Linked Resources
Published
Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar, 2009.
Language
English
Record Appears in