ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by exploring how technological innovations are transforming the way in which biological materials are understood, used, and valued as commodities in the life-sciences industry. It considers a series of questions that revolve around spatial relations. Valuable and replicable genetic and biochemical material and information can be drawn from cryogenically stored tissue samples and biochemical extracts, from cell lines, from extracted DNA, and from coded sequences of DNA stored on a database. Similar modes of transaction are evident in exchanges involving information derived from human genetic material. Consumers of biological materials are often less interested in whole organisms than they are in the genetic or biochemical information embodied in those organisms. The property regimes that apply to informational resources and to “real property” differ from another, as what they seek to protect is qualitatively different.
