Biobanks and intellectual property: commons or caveau?

Biobanks are considered an important resource for research issues, as they are regarded as archives or repositories mainly formed by libraries of biological contents, drawn from individuals or species. Information is connected to contents and represented by its medium, in the form of data, and constitute an intangible good of a priceless value. The matters related to the property, intellectual or physical, are extremely complicated because of a state of uncertainty related to the lack of rules, which do not regulate them adequately. The shortage of a unique reference frame allows the private sector, which is driven by strong economic interests, to privatize data and information to the detriment of the common good, as is the case of the flourishing market of cord blood banks, where the debate about stem cells is exploited for profit making. By the means of several recent initiatives, the biomedical research is trying to make its data freely available by adopting an open source model, thus stimulating innovation and further research. We will analyze the issues connected to commons and to intellectual commons regarding the concepts of private property of data and biological materials, by tracing the path between the definitions of “biobank”: this will identify two main issues, the first stemming from literature, the second from regulations. We will pass through channels regarding legal aspects (as physical and intellectual property), touch on the concept of “commons” compared to the concept of private property on biological materials, the privacy of patients and information, to reach the matter of intellectual property and the difference between finding and invention with the purposes of patent.