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It is apprehended that IPRs in nanotechnology may further reinforce and magnify existing disparities between the developed and developing countries, with differential rates of diffusion creating a ‘nano ’ divide. Nanoscience represents a revolution in constructing devices with atomic precision, where size is measured in billionths of metres (one nanometer=one-billionth of a metre).It represents a range of technologies converging at the nano-scale, including biotechnology, genomics, neurosciences, robotics and information technologies. Nano-scale technologies involve the manipulation of living and non-living materials, some-times in combination. When this is the case, the discipline is known as nanobiotechnology. A nanostructured material used inside the body as a bone replacement is one example of nanobiotechnology; so is a hybrid organism created from living and non-living materials, such as the nano-scale silicon and muscle-tissue hybrid.Closely related to and some- times overlapping nanobiotech is the field of “synthetic biology ” in which living systems are built to order and then programmed to perform specific tasks, combing both biological and non-biological parts. Nanoscience and nanotechnology are expected to revolutionise science and society,with their applications having the potential to provide for clean abundant energy, pollution free and inexpensive production of superior defect-free materials, complete environmental restoration and cleanup, safe and affordable space travel and colonisation and quantum leaps in medicine and health. For developing countries, nanotech has great potential in the form of improved water purification, energy systems, health care,food production and communications. As with the emergence of any pioneering technology, nanotechnology creates issues and opportunities in perfecting IPRs.The TRIPs agreement obligates all WTO member countries to adopt and enforce minimum standards of intellectual property, with WTO members having to allow patents in all fields of technology (including nanotechnology).The TRIPS obligates even “least developed ” countries to enforce nanotech patents by 2006. The field of nanotechnology is currently one of the most active on an international basis,with respect to number of patent applications. As of February 2004,the number of issued US patents incorporating the term ‘nano ’ reached 1,348 patent titles and 82,740 patent descriptions. In addition, nanotechnology industries employ the law of trade secrets to supplement their control over key technology and expertise. Copyright law and trademark law also have implications for the industry. For example, computer software plays an important role in nanotechnology research and commercialisation, and copyright law is a major factor in the management of such software products. As nanotechnology companies grow, they will become increasingly active in the field of trademark law, as they build and manage names and other forms of commercial identification that brand their products and services. Protection for designs afforded by intellectual property law could be useful for some nanotechnology applications that do not meet the requirements of other forms of intellectual property rights such as novelty or non-obviousness. Trade secret protection offers the advantage of avoiding the effort and expense of patent applications and has a potentially indefinite duration; subject, of course, to reverse engineering. Concerns have been raised in several quarters regarding the impact of intellectual property rights in nanotechnology. It is apprehended that IPRs in nanotechnology may further reinforce and magnify existing disparities between the developed and developing countries, with differential rates of diffusion creating a ‘nano ’ divide. As nanotech research is too expensive and complex for small players, nanotech will accelerate the trend towards corporate concentration of power and monopoly formation. Innovations derived from nanoscience are likely to generate intense international competition for patents and a drive to harmonise IPRs across countries. Nanotech is emerging into an already evolving global patent landscape where multi- national corporations are attempting to own downstream access rights to enabling technologies. Nanotechnology is a new field and so most of its patents will be for basic inventions, not for fully developed final products, creating problems because patents on basic inventions are inclined to cover larger areas than final products. Nanotechnology ’s most basic ideas and building blocks are being patented early and often. Taking advantage of quantum physics, nanotech companies are engineering novel materials that may have entirely new properties never before identified in nature. The raw materials for creating nanomaterials and devices are the chemical elements of the Periodic Table-the building blocks of every- thing living and non-living. Thus, atomic-level manufacturing is providing new opportunities for sweeping monopoly control over both animate and inanimate matter with patenting at the nano-scale meaning monopolisation of the basic elements that make life possible.With nanotechnology, the issue is not just patents on life, but on all of nature. |GenenewsHome| Continue... |
