ETHICS, PATENTS AND CRISPR: A NOVEL FORM OF TECHNOLOGY GOVERNANCE?
ETHICS, PATENTS AND CRISPR: A NOVEL FORM OF TECHNOLOGY GOVERNANCE?

Summary/Abstract: Compared to previous techniques of genetic interventions, CRISPRCas9,has been steadily transforming distant possibilities of making effective and realistic genetic changes to emerging realities. To underpin this, only six years passed between Charpentier and Doudna’s 2012 CRISPR-Cas9 paper and the first confirmed cases of gene-edited humans. While governments, international bodies and others, try to ensure that the legislative, regulatory and effective ethical, legal and societal frameworks catch up to the technical possibilities, the concern is that the eventual outcome will be either an ineffective mix of partial regulation or an equally ineffective overreaction in terms of widespread prohibition and blunt overregulation. However, alongside the technical progress, innovation has also been taking place in terms of ethical guidance from the field of patenting. The rise of so-called ‘ethical licencing’ (2017) is one such innovation, where patent holders’ control over CRISPR techniques creates a form of private governance over uses of gene-editing through ethical constraints built into their licensing agreements. In addition, Parthasarathy (2018) has begun an examination of another innovation in the patent system as an alternative to future regulation of gene-editing technologies. In this paper, I will evaluate the emerging prospect of patents as a form of ethical governance of CRISPR-Cas9 and will conclude that, so far, this avenue seems to raise as many issues as it seeks to resolve.

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