BIOL 3095 November 3, 2011.

Seminar Reflection #4. “It’s the lack of innovation, stupid: Intellectual property .”

By: Angélica M. González Sánchez Student number: 804-11-3354

On the seminar given by Dr. Roberto Zayas, he presented the topic of intellectual

property. Dr. Zayas defined us all about intellectual property, which is the field of laws that

protects ideas. This field includes trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and patents, on which

Roberto focused his discussion. A patent is the right to keep others from the usage and

manufacturing of an invention with the condition of revealing all about the product. Our speaker

also described the process and the requirements of patenting. Furthermore, he ended up

discussing about patentable subject matter and how it relates to Science. As we know, Science

commits most of its efforts on reaching new discoveries to keep up promoting advancement.

New findings are meant to be applied to fields of our lives, so that they can be useful. For this,

they have to pass through patenting. Controversy starts on deciding which scientific innovations

should be patentable and which shouldn’t. Since most of the actual discoveries on Science imply

living organisms, this dilemma has a lot to do with ethics and perceptions about life.

In conclusion, through this seminar I got to learn that patenting has great implications in

Science. Some say that it prevents people alien to the discovery from taking advantage of it, on

which case it promotes innovation and rewards inventors. Others say that it slows the process of

discovery and disrupts scientific unity. In my opinion, patenting is useful to avoid fraud, but its

dimensions should be a little more flexible to really induce novelty. For all of what I learned and

its usefulness on my formation as a scientist, I consider this seminar to be very productive and

interesting.