The construction of European patent law by legal intermediaries

This chapter unpacks the construction of European patent law by intellectual property experts, particularly in their willingness to create a unified jurisdiction. Initiated by the European Commission and EU member states, the legislation has in practice been largely piloted by private actors and institutional entrepreneurs. Legal intermediaries (including judges) work to define conventions of patentability in each technological field and are inextricably linked to the examiners of the European patent office. Litigation in the pharmaceutical sector provides a potent illustration. Intriguingly, making laws in the biotech-pharmaceutical sector includes actors who were previously excluded from the negotiations and who put forward obligations related to public health, such as patients’ and physicians’ associations. The chapter’s conclusion is devoted to the processes of hierarchization of professionals and to the inequalities of access to IP law. It underlines the absence of any earnest European reflection around employee inventions in companies, with the exception of the start-up model based on the individual genius of inventors.