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Aaro Tupasela, University of Helsinki, Finland
aaro.tupasela@helsinki.fi

Raymund Werle, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany
werle@mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de

Property and Ownership in the Life Sciences

Rapid developments in biotechnology – an area of radical scientific-technological innovation – have called conventional concepts of property and ownership into question. The promises of well-being brought by biotechnology and biomedicine have attracted growing private and public investments and increased expectations. The exponential growth in the rate of knowledge production and the simultaneous emergence of new forms related to its production has reinforced the public and scientific debate about values, norms and rules. In this context the question of property and ownership – the focus of our sessions – has gained significance with a social, an economic, a legal, as well as an ethical dimension to it.

The sessions address fundamental issues such as:

• Questions related to property and ownership issues in the life sciences. Can life be patented and can nature be owned?
• How do we distinguish between the natural and the artificial?
• How can ownership be determined, and how can it be protected?
• Ownership and access to life science technologies.
• Genetic information as a public vs. private good.

Also more general issues related to the topic of property and ownership are discussed:

• Institutional provisions to create and protect intellectual property.
• Intellectual property rights and innovativeness.
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration between researchers in universities and firms.
• The role of experts and the public in the definition of property and ownership.

List of speakers and abstracts of their papers in alphabetical order:

Calvert, Jane: ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) - J.Calvert@exeter.ac.uk
Genomic patents and the utility requirement

Dickenson, Donna: Centre for the Study of Global Ethics University of Birmingham D.L.Dickenson@bham.ac.uk
Preliminary findings of new EC Framework VI project
PropEur (Property Governance in European Ethics, Science and Law)

Dutfield, Graham: Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow, Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London - g.m.dutfield@qmul.ac.uk
From Mousetraps to (Onco)mice: The Law and Politics of Biotech Patenting

Mali, Franc: University of Ljubljana, Faculty for Social Sciences, Slovenia - franc.mali@uni-lj.si
Some Issues of Intellectual Property Rights in the Context of the New European Innovation Policy

Parthasarathy, Shobita: Science in Human Culture Program, and Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Illinois - shobita@northwestern.edu
A Patent Battleground: Building Europe through the Politics of Patenting Biotechnology

Pottage, Alain: London School of Economics and Political Science - R.A.Pottage@lse.ac.uk
Bio-potentiality. On the "Informaticisation" of Life

Robbins, Jane: Higher Education Management, University of Pennsylvania - invision-robbins@att.net
Conceptualizing Science as Property: Historical Justifications and Objections to Controlling BioScience

Schneider, Ingrid: University of Hamburg, FSP BIOGUM (Biotechnology, Society and the Environment - Medicine/Neuronal Sciences), Germany, Hamburg - Ingrid.Schneider@uni-hamburg.de
The controversy on the EU- biotechnology directive and its national implementation: Contested concepts and boundaries between human biological "material" and "information" in intellectual property claims

Tupasela, Aaro: University of Helsinki, Department of Sociology, Helsinki, Finland - aaro.tupasela@helsinki.fi
From world heritage to proprietary asset: transforming tissues from public resource to private property

Ueyama, Takahiro: Sophia University -t-ueyama@sophia.ac.jp
Hiroshi, Yamanaka: Osaka University
Private industries, academic laboratories and clinical institutions: Complex situations in the development of genetic treatments in Japan.

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Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006