of John’s primary cells a cell line containing genetic material with the potential for development into a cheap, effective and safe cure for AIDS. Dr B sold this cell line to the Columbian Drug Company Ltd for £10m. The drugs company, which already owned the patents for a very expensive, not very effective treatment for AIDS, and also for various palli atives for AIDS symptoms, bought the cell line to delay the development of a new drug. It believed, on the advice of its accountants, that it would be in its own financial best interests to continue to market its existing products for as long as possible, and not take steps to develop the new drug until a similarly cheap and effective cure seemed likely to emerge from elsewhere. What rights and interests might each of these four protagonists plausibly lay claim to in respect of the cell line and its commercial exploitation?1.2.1. John Any legally protected interest that John might have in the cell line must derive from an interest in the cell out of which it was developed, which itself must derive from whatever interest John had in the cell when it was still part of his body. Does John own his body, and, if he does, does it follow that he also owned his body cell?1.2.1.1. The un excised body cell and the question of ownership At one level, it might seem strange to question whether one owns a part of one’s own body, but on closer consideration the issue is rather complex. We need first to take a brief look at what we mean by ownership. We consider the concept in detail in Chapter 6, where we see that, although ‘ownership’ is often used loosely as a synonym for ‘property’, it is more accurately used to describe a particular type of property interest – specifically, the most extensive property interest that any individual can have in a mature legal system that recognises the institution of private property. Most Western legal systems recognise the concept of ownership, but characteristically they also recognise lesser property interests as well (such as the right you acquire in a car if you hire it fora fortnight, or the right I acquire over your land if you grant me a right of way over your driveway to reach my garage). For the moment, however, we will concentrate on ownership itself, not on these other types of property interest. We see in Chapter 6 that, in attempting to formulate a concept of ownership which would be recognisable in any developed Western market economy, Honore ´ identifies eleven ‘standard incidents’ of ownership. He sees these incidents as characteristic of a Western conception of ownership (by which he means ownership by an individual, as opposed to ownership by the state or by a corporation or by a group of people). They are not to be applied mechani stically: he is not suggesting that you cannot possibly be said to bean owner of a thing in any mature legal system if the law does not recognise you as having each one of these incidents. What he does say is that, if you do enjoy all these incidents in relation to a particular thing, most mature legal systems would say you owned it – together4 Property LawDownloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 137.132.123.69 on Sat Aug 30 04:28:41 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139051941.002 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014they are sufficient conditions for ownership, but no one of them is a necessary condition. We look at all eleven of these incidents in Chapter 6, but for present purposes six of them are of particular interest. According to Ho nore ´, in a mature legal system you would typically be said to be the owner of a thing if you have:
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