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Look what arrived in the mail!! My book in paperback! 
Now available wherever books are sold, including your independent bookseller, for $20! 
Patent Politics-curious? Here's what the book is about.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo25338584.html
Now available wherever books are sold, including your independent bookseller, for $20! Patent Politics-curious? Here's what the book is about.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo25338584.html
Distrust in science and tech policies is growing. Patient advocates have challenged FDA's drug approval processes. Indigenous peoples protest oil/gas pipeline construction. Social justice groups question limited funding for health disparities research.
Meanwhile, since the 1970s, environmentalists, patient advocates, etc have argued that patent systems don't reflect public interests: they limit tech access, commodify nature, validate controversial research, etc. These are disputes about both values and what knowledge counts.
I show how patent systems (like other science/tech policy domains) assert legal, bureaucratic, rhetorical "expertise barriers" to bar these outsiders, and the alternative forms of knowledge/expertise they bring, from entering. These are higher in the US patent system than Europe.
The book examines these patent system politics in the US and Europe from the 1970s to the present, starting with the Diamond v. Chakrabarty case and covering controversies over genetically modified organisms, human genes, human embryonic stem cells, drugs. https://twitter.com/ShobitaP/status/1283823290910375941?s=20
It suggests various ways patent systems can be more responsive to public concerns and democratic ideals, including incorporating social science and ethics expertise in decisions, and loosening rules for legal standing in patent cases and patent opposition. https://theconversation.com/an-early-expression-of-democracy-the-us-patent-system-is-out-of-step-with-todays-citizens-43812
The patent system could also play an important part in regulating controversial but lucrative technologies, like CRISPR. After all, the monopoly power that patents provide provide a huge incentive to innovate in a particular field. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07108-3
Patent system reform is particularly crucial now, as we cross our fingers for easy access to COVID treatments and vaccines. @pritikrishtel and I discussed this, and our dream for a more democratic approach, recently on The Received Wisdom podcast. https://twitter.com/ShobitaP/status/1319648774105387009?s=20
But Patent Politics has lessons beyond patent systems. To address community distrust in science and tech policy, governments must lower "expertise barriers" and understand legitimacy of other forms of expertise. Otherwise, trust will keep declining with disastrous consequences.
