Transformative (Bio)technologies in Knowledge Societies: Of Patents and Intellectual Commons

It is no longer a science fiction tale. The 21st century saw its first lab-grown beef burger being cooked and eaten at a live press conference in London, making the harvest of animal meat for human consumption without actually killing animals a reality. Transformative biotechnologies, like cell-cultivation, are redefining fundamental elements of our life, and these innovations promise to change the way we perceive, behave and eat in the future. Lab-grown, cell-based or “cultured meat” is now available for consumption in selected outlets in Singapore, and is estimated to become widely available for sale directly to consumers imminently. If its projections realise, the multitrillion global meat market is on the verge of a disruption unlike anything seen in times past, with cultured meat potentially displaying far-reaching effects on climate change, food security and animal welfare. This chapter begins from the proposition that we currently lack an integrated understanding of the nature, causes and implications of regulatory shifts that appropriately deal with transformative biotechnologies in knowledge societies. With the aim of gaining a better understanding of ‘knowledge society’ epistemologies, this chapter explores the role of patents in cellular agriculture, a field of enquiry that uses cell-cultivation technology, as a case study to elucidate the extent to which IP rights can be deployed to generate optimal public welfare. Through a public interest lens, it also seeks to understand whether growing calls for open science can be aligned with the needs of a flourishing innovation ecosystem. If legal systems have the ability to create parameters that will determine whether and to what extent societal change will happen, it stands to reason that the effectiveness of these legal systems will be directly correlated to the level of granularity with which they mirror social realities. In the same vein, the value of a patent, for example, will be determined by its terms of protection. Combining theoretical and doctrinal legal approaches along with insights from political and economic theories on regulation and governance, this chapter looks at some of the legal questions to illuminate how governments, regulators and stakeholders balance and meet the demands of pressing social challenges, such as climate change and food insecurity, with the benefits of transformative biotechnologies to create an intellectual commons. More specifically, this chapter argues that, in order to avoid ‘a tragedy of the intellectual commons’, intellectual property rights (IPR) demand to be governed by agile, responsive regulatory approaches. It does so by engaging with legal interpretations of terms of protection for patents, against a backdrop of rapidly evolving (bio)technologies that continue to test the resilience of current legal frameworks. It will also deliberate whether, as a result, IPR calibration with current public policy imperatives has gained renewed importance to ensure continued rewards for intellectual creation while promoting social progress.