Research Stream: Social Technologies
Authors: Professor Aisling McMahon, Principal Investigator (ERC PatentsInHumans Project) & Sinéad Masterson, Project Manager (ERC PatentsInHumans Project)
It is hard to believe that the PatentsInHumans Project has passed the one-year point having commenced in November 2022! And what a quick and busy year it was! Alongside recently publishing our Year 1 Report which gave us pause to reflect on the project, we were delighted to write this article for the IDEAS in ALL Blog to mark the first year of the project and to provide a snapshot of the research and other activities the PatentsInHumans team have undertaken during this time.
The PatentsInHumans Project:
The PatentsInHumans Project is a five-year interdisciplinary project funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting grant and is led by Professor Aisling McMahon (Principal Investigator), School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University, and includes project team members: Sinéad Masterson (Project Manager) and Dr Opeyemi Kolawole (Postdoctoral Researcher).
The overarching research objective of the project is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the potential bioethical issues that can be posed by patents, and how such patent rights are used, over a range of ‘technologies’ related to the human body (such as isolated human genes, medicines, vaccines, medical devices etc). It aims to understand to what extent current patent grant and licensing systems consider such potential bioethical issues, and building upon such insights, it then aims to examine whether and to what the current system within and outside patent law can – or should – better engage with such bioethical issues.
Overview of Research Completed in Year 1:
In Year 1, the project team began by mapping the existing literature on the potential bioethical issues posed by patent grant and use over a range of technologies related to the human body. We also examined the institutional and legal systems within which decisions on patent grant and use play out in Europe, and we looked at potential avenues to engage with such bioethical implications within and outside patent law. The team developed key case studies within the project, focusing on five key categories of technologies related to the human body, and examined the potential bioethical implications that can be posed by patent grant and use over a range of technologies within each of these five categories, and how such issues are engaged with (if at all) by the European patent decision making systems.
Alongside this, the team examined the broader role of patents, looking at its economic, governance and regulatory dimensions of patent rights, and relevance of this for the bioethical issues at stake. Finally, the team mapped and examined a range of avenues outside patent law that could be used to engage with the bioethical issues posed by patents over technologies related to the body, including considering the role of human rights, competition law and avenues specific to certain categories of technologies.
Research Publications and Outputs:
Based upon this research, in year one, the team published one peer reviewed book chapter, four blog articles, and a year one report based on project research. Furthermore, the first full length peer reviewed article arising from the PatentsInHumans project was recently accepted for publication in the Medical Law Review Journal (forthcoming). The article entitled ‘Biobank donation in search of public benefits and the impact of intellectual property rights over access to health-technologies developed: A focus on the bioethical implications’ was written by Professor Aisling McMahon and Dr Opeyemi Kolawole (Postdoctoral Researcher). It examines the potential bioethical issues posed by how patents (and other intellectual property rights) can apply over downstream technologies created using or contributed to by knowledge derived from the use of biomaterials from publicly funded biobanks.
The team also finalised several other articles based on project research which are currently under peer review with leading international peer reviewed journals (details not provided here to preserve the anonymity of the peer review process).
Other activities:
The team is committed to disseminating research from the project within the academic community – in year 1, Professor Aisling McMahon (PI PatentsInHumans) delivered eleven invited presentations/research seminars on her research relating to the PatentsInHumans project, at a range of national and international research events. Alongside these presentations, Professor Aisling McMahon (PI) and Dr Opeyemi Kolawole, delivered a total of six further presentations at international academic conferences. These events provided an invaluable opportunity to present and obtain feedback on the preliminary findings of the research to date. The team are also committed to engaging with broader public and scientific communities on the project research and have undertaken several initiatives more broadly with this aim in mind. For instance, in late 2022, work began on the design and consultation process for the project website and logo and these were completed in early 2023. Information on the project can also be found on our X profile (formerly Twitter) using the social media handle @PatentsInHumans.
On 20th April 2023, we hosted the public launch event for the PatentsInHumans project. The event provided an opportunity to introduce the project to the broader community and we were particularly delighted to welcome Professor Jorge Contreras (University of Utah) a leading international expert in intellectual property to deliver the keynote lecture on “The Civil Rights Case Against Gene Patents in America” based on his award winning book entitled The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA(Hachette/Algonquin, 2021).
Finally, to top off a great year for the PIH project and team members, in November 2023, Professor Aisling McMahon was awarded the highly prestigious national Irish Research Council (IRC) Early Career Researcher of the Year award in recognition of her research achievements, and she was appointed in January 2024 to the Editorial Advisory Board of the Medical Law Review. Dr Opeyemi Kolawole also graduated from the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin in Summer 2023, obtaining his PhD in intellectual property law with a focus on technology transfer.
Looking Forward:
Year 2 of the project will see us complete phase one and move into phase two of the project which will involve the development and commencement of the empirical strand of the project. In 2024, we will host our first international workshop which will invite leading scholars and practitioners in the relevant fields to discuss issues related to the PIH Project research. Details to follow on our website!
If you are interested in the work of the PIH team we would encourage you to visit our website: www.patentsinhumans.eu or follow us on X (formerly twitter) @PatentsInHumans.
Funded by the European Union (ERC, PatentsInHumans, Project No. 101042147). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.