Gene cartels : biotech patents in the age of free trade / Luigi Palombi ; with a foreword by Baruch S. Blumberg.

Cheltenham, U.K. ; Northampton, Mass. : Edward Elgar, [2009]

©2009

1 online resource (xvi, 394 pages)

Elgaronline.

Starting with the 13th century, this book explores how patents have been used as an economic protectionist tool, developing and evolving to the point where thousands of patents have been ultimately granted not over inventions, but over isolated or purified biological materials. DNA, invented by no man and once thought to be 'free to all men and reserved exclusively to none', has become cartelised in the hands of multinational corporations. The author questions whether the continuing grant of patents can be justified when they are now used to suppress, rather than promote, research and development in the life sciences.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-376) and index.

English

9781848447431 e-book

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