Prof. Abbe Brown – University of Aberdeen

Welcome to the “Blue Biome Boffins” Campaign where we interview different participants in the BlueRemediomics project, from Early Career Scientists to Senior Researchers, to learn more about their role and valuable work in making this project a success.

Abbe Brown is a professor at the University of Aberdeen (UK), where her research focuses on intellectual property (IP) and its intersection with other legal fields, in addressing key societal challenges. For the BlueRemediomics project, she is involved in Work Package 5, which aims to improve access, protection and sharing of Marine Genetic Resources (MGRs). By addressing regulatory issues and engaging with policy developments on access and benefit-sharing (ABS) and intellectual property (IP), Abbe and her team are helping to shape new approaches to governance and value of ocean genetic resources.

How did you become interested in the field of law specifically related to IP?

Abbe Brown: Law has always fascinated me! I studied law at university and had the chance to study IP during my degree, which wasn’t so common at the time. I’ve always been intrigued by the tension that exists between public and private interests and the reward that IP rights can give — the incentive — whether that’s to write a new story, or develop a new pharmaceutical drug, or new renewable energy technology.

I worked as a practicing lawyer for many years in IP litigation in London, Melbourne and Edinburgh, following which I had the opportunity to do a PhD. Through that, I started working with Prof. Marcel Jaspers, a “real-life scientist” who works with genetic resources coming from the sea to develop new medicines and I really enjoyed the IP component of this work but especially the ABS component.

Can you briefly describe your role in the BlueRemediomics project? 

Abbe Brown: Our work in BlueRemediomics has both a very strong IP component and an ABS part. ABS relates to the question; if you have taken a resource from the sea, is it fair? Should you be allowed to do it? If you were doing it on land and you took some property off my land, then whatever you do with that bit of resource, I would be able to gain some benefit from it.

The same regulation must apply for marine resources e.g. plankton taken from the coastal waters off Scotland. However, there’s a twist! If you were to get your plankton from the deep sea, until very recently it wasn’t clear which laws apply. Did that resource belong to everyone or, indeed, no one? And if it belongs to everyone, should everyone gain some benefit from it, for instance if someone makes a lot of money from a drug developed from deep sea plankton? There are lots of really complex questions about the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and about whether for instance plankton belongs to everyone or no one.

Another twist is that often we don’t work with genetic resources from the sea, we actually work with digitised versions of these resources. From a sustainability point of view, this is great because there is little risk that someone is then going to take all the plankton from the sea. But it raises very many different questions! Should the regulations established in relation to the physical organism also be applied to the digital information obtained from it or should it be different because you’re not actually taking the resource from the sea? These deep questions on fairness and equity are very much what we are focusing on in a lot of international treaty negotiations at the moment such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Plant Treaty, the World Health Organization, Pandemic Treaty. I was at the World Intellectual Property Organization conference for BlueRemediomics only recently, where a new international treaty was agreed. Under the new treaty you now must state where you got a resource from when you apply for a patent, and it also covers the deep sea. What we’re doing in Work Package 5 is trying to influence such treaties and laws as much as we can, sharing our expertise, and learning from the expertise of other partners.

Have you discovered any important milestones or breakthroughs as part of your research in BlueRemediomics?

Abbe Brown: I guess that depends on how you define a milestone. Regarding the “do no significant harm” principle, I think we have managed to draw together differing views from the town hall events and build a base on which going forward, we can try to inform different practices.

From an ABS point of view, I think we are doing our best to influence policy and start conversations on how international treaties might be developed, and how people should implement their obligations under it.

Where do you see your research after the project has ended – which parts of it would you like to take forward in the coming years?

Abbe Brown: I would like to continue to build on my very legal, theoretical work researching “how laws talk to each other”, and also make the most out of the chance BlueRemediomics has given me to engage with real life, scientific questions especially related to ABS and digital sequence information (DSI). I think technology will play a big role in this going forward.

Do you have any advice for people interested in getting into the field of IP research?

Abbe Brown: I would say just do it! I think IP is really interesting and there are so many opportunities – one can look at it from a legal practice side, from the international policy side, from working in business to working in a small spin out. Some of our team members in BlueRemediomics are scientists and lawyers, and I think that’s just a fantastic combination of being able to do both. It’s very practical and I think there will always be jobs involving IP.