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Specific objectives
Specific
objectives within these aims are:
The
identification of existing legal controls in national legal
regimes and analysis of points of convergence and divergence.
Focus
areas will be:
- Identification
and analysis of European
patenting practices of inventions relating to human
embryonic stem cell research .
- Analysis
of national patent regimes, as applied to biotechnological
inventions in general and to human embryonic stem cell
related technology in particular.
- Determination
of what system of regulation governs the patenting of human
embryonic stem cells in different states in Europe and in
the USA, which will be compared and analysed to identify
similarities and differences in the light of the European
Patent Convention and the Biotech directive, including a
future Community Patent.
Analysis
of perspectives on the rights of the human embryo and mediating
institutions and processes.
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Focus
areas will be:
- The
nature and the scope of legal protection of relevant
fundamental ethical principles or values such as the right
to life, in international and regional human rights
instruments as well as constitutional courts and the
European Court of Human Rights.
- Overall
analysis of national differences in legal or ethical
regulation of human embryonic stem cell research, including
differences in legislative approaches as well as the
jurisprudence of State courts on the rights of the human
embryo.
- Analysis
of the role of institutions such as National Bioethics
Commissions and the European Group on Ethics in particular,
through which ethical principles are formulated and
suggestions as to how the role of these institutions as
mediators between society and policy makers may be
strengthened to facilitate the resolution of ethical
disagreement in pluralist democratic societies.
A
European roadmap with the provision of benchmarks which would
satisfy the ‘morality’ requirement without hindering
competitiveness and investment in European biotechnology and
human embryonic stem cell industry.
Focus
areas will include:
- Definitional
problems and boundaries of key concepts such as human ‘body’,
‘body as such’, ‘body part’, ‘human embryo’, etc
… A comparative analysis of the existing definitions and
their scope and meaning in scientific, ethical and legal
contexts to ease resolution of differences.
- Assessment
of the interplay between the principle of subsidiarity,
national regimes on patent law and human rights and
the public morality clause in the European Patent Convention and the Biotech
Directive and
- Suggestions
to resolve legal uncertainty and recommendations on possible
emerging principles, where there is a balance between
ethical and commercial interests, which could form the basis
of a common European policy aimed at facilitating research
and commercial application without a risk of
instrumenalisation and commercialisation of the human embryo.
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