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Patent Ethics: The Misalignment of Views Between the Patent System and the Wider Society

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Abstract

Concerns have been voiced about the ethical implications of patenting practices in the field of biotechnology. Some of these have also been incorporated into regulation, such as the European Commission Directive 98/44 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. However, the incorporation of ethically based restrictions into patent legislation has not had the effect of satisfying all concerns. In this article, we will systematically compare the richness of ethical concerns surrounding biotech patenting, with the limited scope of ethical concerns actually addressed in the patent system. As sources of our analyses we will use literature and document studies and a survey with important stakeholders and experts related to Norwegian patenting in the aquacultural biotechnology sector. We will structure the analyses with an ethical matrix, developed for this purpose. Showing the misalignment of the discussions within and outside the patent system, we suggest that an important reason for the ethical controversy still surrounding patenting is that ethical questions keep being framed in a narrow way within the system. Until a richer set of ethical considerations is addressed head-on within the patent system, the patent system will continue to evoke academic and interest group criticism, potentially contributing to a legitimacy crisis of the whole system.

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Notes

  1. After removal of duplicates. The search was carried out August 4 2016.

  2. O’Sullivan (2012) discusses Rule 28 (c) specifically and shows that this has in some cases been interpreted more broadly, but does not suggest that this implies a general broadening of the interpretation of Article 53 (a).

  3. https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines/e/g_ii_4_1.htm.

  4. Information by Christoph Then, coordinator of No Patents on Seeds! in a telephone interview August 2015, commenting on an opposition case regarding The European patent EP1330552, on selection for the breeding of dairy cows by marker DNA.

  5. http://www.iam-media.com/files/Closer_contacts_with_major_applicants.pdf.

  6. Note that Forsberg (2012) argues that the term ‘moral’ here is slightly misleading. She argues that this dimension of legitimacy (in Suchman’s definition) should rather be called ‘normative’ legitimacy, as it can refer to norms held by a certain community of people, but which nevertheless lack the universal character of most moral norms. In our case, however, when we discuss how the public views the moral legitimacy of the patent institution, the term ‘moral’ fits better as the normative evaluations here are not exclusive to certain groups’ norms, but represent general societal values.

  7. Thambisetty (2017) offers an interesting account of how the EPO through instrumental use of textualisation and other strategies tries to repair some of the legitimacy lost or revoked by civil society organisations, while at the same time maintaining its legitimacy in the eyes of the patent community.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by the Research Council of Norway’s ELSA program, Grant No 220609/O70. We are grateful for all the discussions we have had with our good colleagues Morten Walløe Tvedt and Nico Groenendijk in the Patent Ethics project, and we appreciate the useful feedback we received in the publication process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group on Responsible Innovation, Work Research Institute, Oslo and Akershus University College, P.O. Box 4, St Olavs Plass, 0130, Oslo, Norway

    Ellen-Marie Forsberg & Anders Braarud Hanssen

  2. Nofima Marin, Ås, Norway

    Hanne Marie Nielsen & Ingrid Olesen

  3. Seges, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Hanne Marie Nielsen

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  1. Ellen-Marie Forsberg
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Correspondence to Ellen-Marie Forsberg.

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Forsberg, EM., Hanssen, A.B., Nielsen, H.M. et al. Patent Ethics: The Misalignment of Views Between the Patent System and the Wider Society. Sci Eng Ethics 24, 1551–1576 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9956-5

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