LML director Prof. Kathy Liddell presented this December at the CMEL conference in Hong Kong.
It was led by the co-Directors of CMEL, Calvin Ho and Gilberto Yeung, and generously supported by the WYNG Foundation and Hatton Trust. It was held at HKU's Law Faculty, on Centennial Campus, beneath Victoria’s Peak that looks out over the incredible landscape of Honk Kong.
Patent law plays an important role in the regulation of emerging medical technologies. By providing a market-based incentive in return for public disclosure of a new invention, it too is a strategic policy that seeks to influence human behaviour to avoid economic, social and moral problems that result from ‘free’ unregulated interactions. Understanding how it does that, and influencing its evolution, are key factors for the future of the ‘regulatory state’ surrounding biomedical R&D and emerging health technologies.
Prof. Liddell added:
"Patent law is an important tool in the regulatory tool box for emerging health technologies. Sometimes this is overlooked, but literature is gradually rectifying this. It - patent law - seeks to correct two market failure problems: free riding that leads to innovation stagnation, and too much secrecy that hinders competition after patent exclusivity ends. It is a powerful, indirect, upstream regulatory tool, which has a major impact on the pace, power, and profitability of technological development."
More information can be found here.