Emerging and unresolved issues: the example of marine genetic resources of areas beyond national jurisdiction - Ocean Sustainability in the 21st Century - page 324

9.3.2 Intellectual property rights: incentives or obstacles?
From the standpoint of promoting innovation, in cases of privately funded research as well
as university research and public-private partnerships, intellectual property protection and,
in particular patents, may provide important incentives to promote investments in research
and development and - through licensing - potential pathways towards technology transfer,
product development, and commercialization. While several other types of intellectual prop-
erty rights, including copyright, trade secrets, and sui generis database protection, play an
important role in relation to marine genetic resources and related innovations, this chapter
only considers in detail relevant aspects of patent law and policy.
Genetic resources, including marine genetic resources, can be modified by human in-
tervention and take on characteristics that do not exist in nature. When these modifications
result in a new biotechnological invention that involves an inventive step and is capable
of industrial application, the invention may qualify for patent protection (Chiarolla, 2011 ;
Eisenberg, 2003 ; Trevor, 2006 ). For instance, 'genetic patents' may comprise nucleic acids,
nucleotide sequences and their expression products; transformed cell lines; vectors; as well
as methods, technologies, and materials for making, using, or analysing such nucleic acids,
nucleotide sequences, cell lines, or vectors (OECD, 2006 ) .
Similarly to what has happened in other biotechnology areas, the application of mo-
lecular genetics and bioinformatics has transformed marine genetic resources into a prom-
ising source of appropriable information. The hereditary information which can be found in
DNA, coupled with the identification of genes' functions (e.g. the way in which the latter
code for proteins - a process also known as gene expression), may constitute the basis of
patent applications that - if granted - can provide monopoly rights on the claimed inven-
tions. Such inventions may include, inter alia: genes and gene sequences; cell lines; amino
acids; proteins; viruses; and express sequence tags (ETSs), which are smaller segments of
complementary DNA that are used as intermediate research tools. Since the inception of bi-
otechnology patenting in the 1980s, the impact of these patents on research and innovation
has been extremely controversial.