Topic Area 2: Intellectual Property and the Bioeconomy

TOPIC AREA 2: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

AND THE BIOECONOMY

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased discussions centering on the US bioeconomy, but the development of treatments and vaccines to fight the virus has also illuminated critical issues of intellectual property rights. The debate surrounding intellectual property rights in the bioeconomy is multifaceted and involves an understanding of biopiracy, the Bayh-Dole Act (an important piece of intellectual property rights legislation), and capacity disparities between nations. One of the primary challenges in intellectual property rights within the bioeconomy is defining what is an invention versus natural (Straus, 2017). This determination was established in 1980 when the Supreme Court ruled that live, man-made organisms (for example, genetically-modified food products) could be patented (Straus, 2017). And while this ruling opened the doors for large-scale biotechnology development and the expansion of the formal bioeconomy, it also led to increasing claims of biopiracy. Biopiracy is defined as “the appropriation of the knowledge and genetic resources of farming and indigenous communities by individuals or institutions who seek exclusive monopoly control (patents or intellectual property) over these resources and knowledge” (Hamilton, 2008, p. 1-2). For example, the patenting of plant breeding has been considered by some to be biopiracy. In essence, biopiracy and intellectual property within the bioeconomy both purport that one cannot patent nature, but there are