Derogatory to Professional Character?
Derogatory to Professional Character?
The Evolution of Physician Anti-Patenting Norms
Kathy Strandburg looks at the field of medicine, which has a long history of opposition to patents. She tracks the historical evolution of user innovation among physicians, with particular focus on ether anesthesia, a medical breakthrough that started out as a nineteenth-century party drug. User innovator communities often eschew patenting, relying instead on reputation-based reward systems and sharing norms. But while virtually all medical innovation was once the province of user innovator physicians, this is no longer the case. The ethical norms against patenting drugs and devices are no longer observed today, yet the norm against patenting medical procedures has remained surprisingly robust. This chapter argues that physician patenting norms have evolved to track changes in the role physicians play in medical innovation. This story helps illustrate the interplay between social norms and law, showing how they can influence each other and shift over time.
Keywords: intellectual property, law, norms, patents, medicine, drugs, medical devices, physicians, community, incentives
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