Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce

5. Owning Science: Intellectual Property and Laboratory Life

5 Owning Science Intellectual Property and Laboratory Life A selection of articles appearing in Science magazine in the late 1990s points to the growing concern about intellectual property in the increasingly commercialized world of the biological sciences . One article discusses a debate over patenting human gene fragments (Science 1997b, 187). Another talks of the industrysupported work of academic “genetic prospectors,” researchers who are “scouring odd corners of the world for families whose DNA is likely to carry interesting genes” (Marshall 1997, 565).1 These scientists and their collaborators intend to patent the “interesting” genes they discover. Still another pair of articles considers a debate over ownership and control of data on the genetic composition of the entire human population of Iceland. The company that would undertake this data collection wants to be able to sell access to it. Some scientists worry that the company will restrict access when restriction rather than access may be in its economic interest (Enserink 1998a and 1998b).2 The trend is clear: the products of biological research from both inside and outside the university are increasingly treated as private property and protected by U.S. patent law. With federal support for academic science limping behind demand, this trend could be a boon. Companies interested in deriving profit from the revolution in biology often turn to university labs. In exchange for research support, companies can gain access to proprietary inventions. At the same time, some researchers and policymakers express concern that commitments to intellectual 114 property protection in university settings can undermine traditions of free intellectual exchange. And recent developments illustrate how the patenting of research tools could hinder scienti fic investigation. The literature that explicitly addresses intellectual property matters and academic science is extensive. As I noted in chapter 2, a central concern of this work is the increasing tendency of academic biologists—especially those scientists who have contractual relationships with commercial entities—to seek patent protection of their work, and the impact that action has or will have on the traditional commitment in academe to the free flow of information and research materials (see AAUP 1983; Kenney 1986; Shenk 1999).3 The primary debates in science studies give little attention to intellectual property matters. In Laboratory Life, Latour and Woolgar tell us that the laboratory they studied had “many connections with clinicians and industry through patents ” (1986 [1979], 182), but they provide no analysis of the role of intellectual property considerations in the fact construction process or in the workings of the laboratory. Similarly, Knorr Cetina mentions intellectual property matters, but provides no analysis of the existence of relationships with commercial concerns and applied interests among scientists in the laboratory she studied for her 1981 ethnography. Similarly, in her more recent comparative laboratory study, Knorr Cetina mentions that research materials can be patented (1999, 154) but provides no sustained discussion of this state of affairs. In the 1990s several articles on patenting and the biological sciences that explicitly deploy the conceptual tools currently used in science studies were published. In one paper, Alberto Cambrosio and his colleagues (1990) investigate patent litigation involving a dispute over immunoassays between two biotechnology firms. The essay focuses on “rhetoric and representations” (Cambrosio , Keating, and MacKenzie 1990, 277), exploring “how things perceived as naturally given are constructed and represented ” (1990, 277). The authors’ concern is mainly with how categories are constructed, as well as how they are blurred in the context of the dispute. Using a related approach, Greg Myers (1995) follows two academic scientists as they navigate the world of patenting. Myers explores the differences between patents and scientific articles in Owning Science 115 the ways they make claims, how they relate to other texts, and how they narrate future action (1995, 58). Myers draws on the concept of enrollment used by actor-network analysts, and tries to show how the scientists he follows configure actors ranging from experimental animals to lawyers and companies (1995, 60). He argues that when a patent succeeds, it creates the social world around it (1995, 99).4 In this chapter, I provide a different perspective on intellectual property protection and the academy than that provided by much of the current science studies scholarship and science policy literature. Whereas ethnographies like Latour and Woolgar’s, and Knorr Cetina’s barely mention intellectual property matters, I believe that a serious study of contemporary academic biology demands a substantial analysis...