This article uses data from several publicly available databases to show that the distribution of intellectual property for frontier technologies, including those useful for sustainable development, is very highly skewed in favor of a handful of developed countries. The intellectual property rights (IPR) regime as it exists does not optimize the global flow of technology and know-how for the attainment of the sustainable development goals and is in need of updating. Some features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution imply that the current system of patents is even more in need of reform than before. COVID-19 vaccines and therapies and the vast inequality in access to these has highlighted the costs of inaction. We recommend several policy changes for the international IPR regime. Broadly, these fall into three categories: allowing greater flexibility for developing countries, reassessing the appropriateness of patents for technologies that may be considered public goods, and closing loopholes that allow for unreasonable intellectual property protections.

In this article I explore attributions of credibility, important to designations of ‘expertise’, within the area of DNA patenting. I define ‘credibility’ as a relationship of recognition people establish to other actors. Through repeated interviews, interspersed with the provision of information, I have identified two different ways in which respondents position themselves in relation other actors as a way of assessing their credibility: when assuming a ‘partisan position’, they explicitly draw on ideological convictions; when assuming a ‘hierarchical position’, the ranking of credibility depends on how informed and objective others are perceived to be. The positions embody different roles for the respondents as ‘citizens’ and as ‘lay persons’, respectively; that is, they indicate the possession of contrasting ideas about their own relevance in policy matters. This raises the question of how to interpret the fact that people disqualify themselves from policy making, seeing themselves as incompetent. Challenging current conflict-focused models in the public understanding of science (PUS) literature, I argue that the hierarchical position can be interpreted as a broader desire for consensus. In the patent area, I show that paying attention to the hierarchical position is crucial to understanding why an industry representative is regarded by some to be a credible ‘expert’. The study sheds light on the ‘public understanding of expertise’ more broadly, and within the bioeconomic field in particular.

It is a striking feature of current biomedicine that it increasingly relies on access to various types of human biological material. Social scientists often criticize the exchange systems facilitating this access for causing a process of ‘commodification’. Though it is not always clear what commodification is thought to imply, a morally degrading transformation from something intrinsically human to an object of ownership seems to be at stake in most accounts. Enrolment in capitalist exchange is typically portrayed as (actively) changing the status of the (passive) body part from being part of a dignified human whole to be a mere fungible commodity. In this article I argue that the notion of commodification is inadequate for an analysis of the dynamics at play in the establishment of exchange systems for human biological material. In particular I focus on the development of the patent regime. The point is that rather than focusing merely on what capitalist forms of exchange do to biotechnology and the body, we might begin to appreciate what biotechnology and the socio-cultural significance of the body do to capitalism and its property structures—or, more precisely, how people’s engagement with, and concern about, biotechnology contributes to the shaping of multiple capitalisms.