66608 - Intellectual Propriety and Bioethics

Learning outcomes

Learning of the EC and national provisions on biotechnological inventions and patents, plus related questions on patentability of plants or animals (also in the U.S), in connection with the (bio)ethical problems arising from this new kind of private ownership.

Course contents

The course is divided in a first part, dealing with biotech inventions and plant varieties in Italian ad EU Patent Law.

The second concerns the study of theoretical and normative models of medical, animal and environmental bioethics applied to ethical-legal issues related to the development of emerging biotechnologies (with specific focus on the reproductive revolution, scientific research and trials, genetic engineering, protection of the environment and animal trials).

Readings/Bibliography

Intellectual Property Syllabus

MUSSO, Brevetti per invenzioni industriali e modelli di utilità, Zanichelli, Bologna, 2013, pages 1-332 and 336-370.

The text in footnotes is not requested for the exam, being useful only in case of dissertations.

Bioethical Syllabus

G. BONIOLO e P. MAUGERI (Eds.), Etica alle frontiere della biomedicina. Per una cittadinanza consapevole, Mondadori Università, Milano, 2014.

Teaching methods

Due to the legal nature of the subject-matter, attending lectures is not compulsory, but strongly suggested, if possible.

Teaching explanations of ethical and legal subject-matter will be possibly dialogic, i.e. interconnected with the students' particular questions or requests.
 

Assessment methods

The exam is oral and will focus on three/four questions concerning both the contents of Intellectual Property and Bioethics above specified. A written intermediary test, not compulsory and concerning both the subject-matters, will be moreover available at about the end of the lessons (multiple-choice test).

The oral exam and the in itinere test will be available for attending students as well for and not-attending students or students of previous years (in any case according to the contents and the recommended readings above indicated).

Students who will pass the in itinere test must also pass the final oral exam, but only with one question for each subject-matter (Intellectual Property and Bioethics) for mere confirmation of the previous mark. The students who will not pass the written test or wish to improve the mark, must have anew the complete oral exam (three/four questions).

The students of past years are strongly suggested to comply with the recommended readings and other teaching tools for the present year.

Teaching tools

Besides recommended readings and provisions (in particular, Legislative Decree, No 30/2005, and further amendments, secc. 45 et seq.), lectures will also deal with National, international and European case law on the subject-matter.

Office hours

See the website of Alberto Musso

See the website of Silvia Zullo