Join two patent experts (one is a historian) for a fun debate about the ethics and economic impact of America's patent system.  

Last month, President Biden's Administration made the extraordinary decision to support the suspension of Covid vaccine patent rights.  While pundits weigh our moral obligation to help other countries against the gravity of patent rights for America's businesses and their leadership in innovation, we decided to ask an entirely different question - a seminal question. What is a patent anyway? What rights does a patent give a patent holder? And where did patents come from? And why has patent law - a highly technical field - has had such a complicated history?  

To get the answer to these questions and learn more about the history of patent law, we turned to two experts, Mr. Steve Pepe & Dr. Sam Brenner. 

And here is a link to a fascinating episode about the history of CRISPR patents. 

Host of the History Behind News podcast

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