Person Skilled in the Art in Synthetic Biology from Iraqi and Malaysian Perspectives link
انسانية
NanoEthics Studies of New and Emerging Technologies link
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Zinatul Ashiqin Zainol
This article presents the problem of a person
skilled in the field of synthetic biology. The person
skilled in the art is one of the notions which have to be
revisited due to the multidisciplinary nature of synthetic
biology which involves numerous fields. The article
studies this problem from the perspectives of Iraqi and
Malaysian patent laws. First, it conceptualizes synthetic
biology and person skilled in the art. The Iraqi and
Malaysian attitudes regarding person skilled in the art
are then addressed. Afterwards, the paper points out the
multidisciplinary nature of synthetic biology. In its last
part, it discusses the person skilled in synthetic biology
and how patent offices and courts deal with this point.
Finally, the authors submit that the use of a team of
skilled persons to substitute for a single technician
would render the obviousness test a subjective assessment
dependent on the inventor. The level of nonobviousness
would differ in similar cases simply because
of the number of inventors. Consequently, the
suggestion of having a hypothetical team instead of
one person is irrelevant because skills that are attributed
to the skilled notional person are not real skills. Thus,
replacing him is easy, but the replacement would be
fruitless because the skills attributed to a person or a
team will be similar.