Ottolia, Andrea --- "Moral Limits to Biotech Patents in Europe: A Quest for Higher Harmonization" [2011] ELECD 982; in Arezzo, Emanuela; Ghidini, Gustavo (eds), "Biotechnology and Software Patent Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Biotechnology and Software Patent Law

Editor(s): Arezzo, Emanuela; Ghidini, Gustavo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800402

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Moral Limits to Biotech Patents in Europe: A Quest for Higher Harmonization

Author(s): Ottolia, Andrea

Number of pages: 30

Extract:

12. Moral limits to biotech patents
in Europe: a quest for higher
harmonization
Andrea Ottolia

INTRODUCTION

Intellectual property law involves the consideration of public interests:
while some are ontologically involved with the recognition of exclusive
rights,1 others emerge only in specific cases of conflict.2 IPRs on biotech-
nology inventions raise a wide set of specific interests of the latter type:
from food security to biodiversity, from environmental issues to human
dignity. The interface between IPRs and ethics has received wide regula-
tion in Europe both under the EPC system and under the harmoniza-
tion system provided by EU law on the premise that when the subject
matter belongs to the living world or involves fundamental mechanics
of life, moral issues become ontologically relevant to this field of law.


1 The typical function of intellectual property law is the fine tuning of IPRs

by crafting the protection in a way that minimizes costs and maximizes benefits for
society at large, see P. Torremans, Holyoak and Torremans Intellectual Property
Law, Butterworths, 2001, at 20 and 16, M. Ricolfi, Biotechnology, Patents and
Epistemic Approaches, Journal of Biolaw & Business, Special Supplement (2002), at
77. Indeed, intellectual property models differ substantially not only in the cogency
of the norms guaranteeing such societal interests but mostly in the choice of the
institutions meant to guarantee such balance.
2 I would recall at least two kinds of public interests that carry more excep-

tional interference with IPRs and whose internalization in the IP protection is
...