Synthetic Biology Caught between Property Rights and the Commons

Article: Rai A, Boyle J (2007) Synthetic Biology: Caught between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons. PLoS Biol 5(3): e58.

URL = http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0050058

Summary

James Boyle:

"In an article written for the journal PloS Biology in 2007, my colleague Arti Rai and I explored the likely legal future of synthetic biology. We found reason to worry that precisely because synthetic biology looks both like software writing and genetic engineering, it might end up combining the expansive patent law aspects of both those technologies, with the troubling prospect of strong monopolies being created over the basic building blocks of science itself. Some of the patents being filed are astoundingly basic, the equivalent of patenting Boolean algebra right at the birth of computer science. With courts now reconsidering both business method and perhaps software patents, and patents over human genes, the future is an uncertain one."