A Unitary Patent for a (dis)United Europe and the Long Shadow of History

This article retraces the history of patent harmonization in Europe and reviews the European Union “patent package” and its approval by the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the light of this history. The article draws on archived and hitherto unused confidential documents to retrace the key institutions and players in the origins and evolution of the European patent unification movement. The study reveals that the EU project was originally led by the Council of Europe and analyzes the reasons why the EU has struggled to develop a coherent model of integration to facilitate realization of the internal market ever since. The historical legacy suggests that a critical turning point was the creation of the European Patent Organization as the leading engine of patent policy in Europe, an autonomous organization which is not subject to judicial oversight by the EU court or meaningful political scrutiny by the European Union and its members. The article concludes with a case study illustrating how the latent difficulties over the relationship between different European institutions and the jurisdiction of European tribunals and courts are manifested today in the unitary patent and the unified patent court

In defence of Helsinki and human rights

The Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) is widely recognised as the leading authoritative source on ethical standards of medical research worldwide. Yet, in the past decade, different sources have questioned the authority of the DoH and its compliance with human rights, and argued for its replacement with UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights .This paper argues that the tensions and alleged conflicts between Helsinki and human rights instruments are overstated, and that the latest version of the DoH is an important complement to human rights instruments in protecting the rights of disadvantaged populations and participants in biomedical research

Stem Cell Research Funding Policies and Dynamic Innovation: A Survey of Open Access and Commercialization Requirements

# The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract This article compares and contrasts the pressures of both open access data sharing and commercialization policies in the context of publicly funded embryonic stem cell research (SCR). First, normative guidelines of international SCR orga-nizations were examined. We then examined SCR funding guidelines and the project evaluation criteria of major funding organizations in the EU, the United Kingdom (UK), Spain, Canada and the United States. Our survey of policies revealed subtle pressures to commercialize research that include: in-creased funding availability for commercialization opportuni-ties, assistance for obtaining intellectual property rights (IPRs) and legislation mandating commercialization. In lieu of open access models, funders are increasingly opting for limited sharing models or “protected commons ” models that make the research available to researchers within the same region or those receiving the same funding. Meanwhile, there still is need for funding agencies to clarify and standardize terms such as “non-profit organizations ” and “for-profit research,” as more universities are pursuing for-profit or commercial opportunities. Keywords Stemcell research(SCR).Humanembryonicstem cells (hESC). Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). Open access. Data sharing. Commercialization Abbreviations hESC human embryonic stem cells iPSC induced pluripotent stem cells IPRs intellectual property rights MTA material transfer agreement SCR stem cell research SLA simple letter agreement TTO technology transfer offic

Phenomenology and the geometrization of vision

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX87330 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo