ABSTRACT
The purpose of patents — this is even expressed in the US Constitution — is to promote science and the useful arts. Patents are not just granted for the sake of it, in order to give a particular private benefit to an inventor, but they are granted because it is thought that they are economically valuable. It is in that context that the author thinks one has to start with the presumption that issues of public policy can and should play a role in the granting of patents. The opponents to patents of this kind are people who, as it were, have no interest in the matter commercially. If one were to do something like that — raising issues of public policy and morality at the stage when a patent comes to be enforced — it would have to be ensured that there were some adequate role for public participation in decision making of that kind.
