The Future of Patentability for Biotechnology

Intellectual property law and the controversy surrounding its nuances, loopholes, and obscure definitions have existed and grown since the inception of the original U.S. Constitution. The original idea was to legislate a way so that innovators and inventors of every generation could be incentivised to create new products which could increase the efficiency and productivity in all aspects of American life. However, the generalizations placed in the law, perhaps for the purpose of giving inventors more leeway, has become, over time, a double-edged sword. Because lawsuits and the lucrative settlements that follow were attached to violating intellectual property law, other individuals have mischievously used this to their advantage, namely creating as many random ideas as possible and patenting them so that when someone ingeniously creates an actual product or physical manifestation, those individuals can sue that inventor for supposedly “stealing” their “idea”. These individuals are basically unable to bring their idea to life so they set traps for those who can. So the law, which originally was supposed to motivate Americans to create has now become a weapon that can be used against those true innovators. Our topic then is to look more in-depth at a specific aspect under the broad umbrella of intellectual property law: can intellectual property law apply to biotechnology? We want to look into different forms of biotechnology, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals, observe where patent law has deviated from its original path and where it is going.