Funding of Stem Cell Research and Patents in the European Union

Abstract

There is a growing body of scholarship on the legislative and judicial moral exclusions on stem cell patents in the European Union (EU) but little on the EU’s policy on patents arising from stem cell research projects funded by the European Union. The aim of this chapter is to initiate such an enquiry to determine whether the European Union policy strikes the right balance between the protection of IP and the public interest in exploitation and dissemination of the outputs of publicly funded research. The first part parts examines the legacy of the Brustle ruling in the current legal challenges to the funding of stem cell research. The second calls for greater attention to the interface between EU policy on the funding of scientific research and IP policy in the European Union. It provides an overview of the aims of the European Union’s funding programmes and their extension from applied technology, in the early years of the Union, to basic science and the ‘knowledge economy’ in the last decade. The third part analyses the key elements of the European Union’s IP policy at the close of the last Framework Programme and argues that the priority granted to patent protection is liable to frustrate the pursuit of scientific research and stem cell science as a cooperative venture for the benefit of the public through the triple lock of prioritizing patent protection over publication in scholarly journals, encouraging withholding of patent applications and minimal reporting requirements. The last part illustrates the need for increased public scrutiny and transparency on patents generated under EU funded projects to facilitate public access to the benefits of EU funded research.