[Sci-tech-public] REMINDER: STS Circle, September 23 - Shobita Parthasarathy (Please RSVP)

[STS]

STS Circle at Harvard
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Shobita Parthasarathy
University of Michigan, Ford School

on
Making Democracy in the Patent System: Comparing the Life Form Patent Battles in the US and Europe


Monday, September 23
12:15-2:00 pm
Maxwell Dworkin, 33 Oxford Street, Room 119

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu> by 5pm Wednesday, September 18.

Abstract: Across the world, there are a growing number of civil society-led challenges to patents covering medicines, life forms, indigenous knowledge, and software. Comparing the recent debates regarding patents on genes, stem cells, and plants in the United States and Europe, this talk argues that as protestors challenge how modern societies define invention and technology, they are also questioning the political orders that support modern intellectual property systems and the governance of science and technology more generally. Analyzing these conflicts helps us understand how intellectual property and political order are intertwined, and thus, the widespread social and political consequences of these seemingly narrow technical debates. The talk explains further how and why, despite global efforts towards market harmonization and the similar epistemological basis of modern patent regimes, these conflicts are being resolved differently across the world, leading to different approaches to not only invention, but also democracy.



Biography:  Shobita Parthasarathy is Associate Professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is the author of numerous articles and a book, Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care (MIT Press, 2007), which helped to inform the recent US Supreme Court case regarding human gene patents. She is currently working on a book comparing the life form patent controversies in the United States and Europe.




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http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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