In times of the pandemic it was called to ban patents that are related to Covid-19 vaccines, medicaments, and diagnostics and the European Parliament was in favour of it. Now there is a call from the European Parliament to ban all patents on new genomics techniques (NTG) and plants. Quo vadis?
In a world where biotechnology has been enabling products and processes for decades, it’s time to step out from behind the technology and claim the resulting products and their value in our everyday life. It needs higher visibility and recognition of impact, moving beyond its ‘enabling’ brand which forever makes it sound like the benefits are just around the corner, rather than the existing significant economic and industrial impact.