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Biotech in Court

A Legal Lesson on the Unity of Science

Harvard University, Department of the History of Science, Science Center 371, One Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA, kswanson{at}fas.harvard.edu

This paper examines the American legal system's reliance upon the unity of science through a close study of the testimony presented in a biotech patent trial, explicated through the context of the legal practice of patent drafting and the history of the American biotechnology industry. In order to decide whether a key patent related to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invalid, the court needed to decide whether the inventing scientists had made intentional misrepresentations in the process of drafting and prosecuting the patent. I analyze the various images of science presented to the court by scientists testifying about how scientists report their experimental results in scientific publications. By setting this testimony about scientific authorship in the context of the legal understanding of patent authorship, I explain why the court was prepared to accept a universal notion of science and of the scientist that rendered unimportant any distinctions between papers and patents, or between professors and biotech scientists. This image of universal science was opposed at trial by local and specific images of sciences which have been institutionalized in industrial science throughout the 20th century, and which I argue were adopted and adapted by the American biotech industry of the 1970s to the 1990s in ways that contributed both to the trial court's finding against the patent, and to the instability of that ruling.

Key Words: author • biotechnology • inventor • law • patent • PCR • unity of science

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 3, 357-384 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312706071793


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