Abstract
Biotechnology—inventions based on genetic material or manipulation of that material—is central to modern innovation, in areas from vaccines and other drugs to gene-editing therapy to genetically altered crops. Patents on such substances or processes raise important legal and social-policy questions. Patents can encourage beneficial innovation but can also raise prices and limit access by low-income or vulnerable populations.
Our speakers will discuss two such issues and their moral and religious context:
Professor Margo Bagley (Emory University) will discuss developing nations’ ability to limit patent rights to control the costs of essential medicines for AIDS, HIV, and other diseases. Defenders of patent rights sometimes say that limiting patents violates the bedrock command "Thou shalt not steal." Professor Bagley will critically evaluate that claim.
Professor Joshua Sarnoff (DePaul University) will discuss a recent proposal in Congress to expand the range of materials that are eligible for a patent: gene sequences, biological processes, and so forth. He will discuss why religion and morality matter to what may or should become patent eligible under such proposals.
Both speakers will summarize the chapters they contributed to Patents on Life: Religious, Moral, and Social Justice Aspects of Biotechnology and Intellectual Property, a new book from Cambridge University Press that addresses a range of key issues and includes moral evaluations from Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and nonreligious perspectives. The book arose from a 2015 conference at Cambridge University co-sponsored by the Murphy Institute and the Von Hügel Institute at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge University.
The program will be moderated by St. Thomas's Professor Thomas Berg, a co-editor of and contributor to the Patents on Life book.
Speakers
Margo A. Bagley is an Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. She returned to Emory in 2016 after ten years at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she held the Hardy Cross Dillard chair. Professor Bagley served on the National Academies’ Committee on University Management of Intellectual Property and is currently a member of the National Academies’ Committee for Advancing Commercialization from the Federal Laboratories. She is a technical expert to the African Union in World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) matters, and on digital sequence information issues in UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) matters. She is also Friend of the Chair in the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore, and served as a member of the CBD’s Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources. She has served as a consultant to the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Secretariat, an expert advisor to the Government of Mozambique in WIPO matters, and is a collaborator in the Harvard University Global Access in Action (GAiA) program. Professor Bagley has taught U.S., international, and comparative patent law courses in several countries and has published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs as well as two books with co-authors. A chemical engineer by training, Professor Bagley worked in industry for several years before attending law school and is a co-inventor on a patent for reduced fat peanut butter.
Joshua D. Sarnoff is a Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law, a 2018 DePaul University Spirit of Inquiry Awardee, and a former Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology (CIPLIT®). In 2019, he testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Intellectual Property Subcommittee on patent eligibility issues, and was an expert witness in an international patent law arbitration. From 2014 to 2015, Professor Sarnoff was a Thomas A. Edison Distinguished Scholar at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He teaches patent law, advanced patent law, administrative law, law and climate change, and other courses. He was previously a professor at the Washington College of Law, American University, in the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, and at the University of Arizona College of Law, and was a visitor at the University of Baltimore School of Law in the Fall of 2017. Professor Sarnoff is a registered patent attorney and a member of the bar of Washington DC, a former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Circuit Bar Association, a former pro bono mediator for the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and a member of the boards of directors and advisory boards of various non-profit organizations. Professor Sarnoff has been involved in a wide range of intellectual property legal and policy disputes, has been an expert witness and consultant in patent disputes and policy reforms, has submitted testimony and white papers on domestic patent law reform bills, has filed numerous amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court and in the Federal Circuit on important patent law issues, and has been a consultant to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on international intellectual property, trade, and environment issues. He is a frequent lecturer on intellectual property law issues and has written numerous articles and book chapters on patent law and on climate change and innovation policy. Professor Sarnoff is the editor of and a contributing author to the Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Climate Change (Edward Elgar Publishing 2016).
Thomas C. Berg is the James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minnesota. He teaches and writes on religious liberty, constitutional law, and intellectual property and supervises students in the religious liberty appellate clinic, which files briefs in cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate courts. He is the author of five books—including a leading casebook, Religion and the Constitution (with Michael McConnell and Christopher Lund), and The State and Religion in a Nutshell—more than 150 scholarly and popular articles and scholarly book chapters, and approximately 60 briefs in the Supreme Court and other courts. He also writes on issues concerning intellectual property, justice and human development, and religious thought, including a recent co-edited book Patents on Life: Religious, Moral, and Social Justice Aspects of Biotechnology and Intellectual Property (Cambridge U. Press). He serves on multiple advisory boards and contributes to the SCOTUS Blog, the Mirror of Justice, and other weblogs. He has degrees from the University of Chicago, in both law and religious studies; from Oxford University, in philosophy and politics (as a Rhodes Scholar); and from Northwestern University, in journalism.
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