Abstract

DIAZ RONNER, Lucila  and  FOLGUERA, Guillermo. Intellectual Property And Notions Of Life: Relationships, Conditions Of Possibility And Challenges. Rev. iberoam. cienc. tecnol. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.12, n.35, pp.11-38. ISSN 1850-0013.

The powerful technologies of the 21 st century set a special technological direction not only because of the productive and social transformations they generate, but also for being part of a project of dominant interests about nature and human existence. This paper focuses on the question raised around the ways and methods regarding the protection of knowledge and the link with the conceptualization of the living, connecting the development of science with different ways to provide a legal protection to inventions, throughout the different historical periods. Our general hypothesis is that there was a strong relation between the conceptualizations of life and the ways they were privatized from the 15 th century onwards in the Western world. Therefore, this paper characterizes the links between intellectual property systems and the conceptualizations of the living during three different “moments”: the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, within the context of the Industrial Revolution, and the 20 th and 21 st centuries, considering said link for both, the patenting of living organisms in general and the case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in particular.

Keywords : Notions of life; Intellectual property; Genetically modified organisms.