Ozlem Corapcioglu

Profile

Thesis title

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Private Governance Tools in Regulating the Morality of Germline Editing Technologies: Protecting the Living through Ethical Licensing

Summary of research

CRISPR technology offers the potential to eliminate heritable terminal single-gene disorders and cure life-threatening conditions. However, European Patent Law imposes a blanket refusal of human genome germline editing (GGE) patents with the morality exception. The research analyses whether the morality exception in European Patent Law could (inadvertently) undermine the project of ethical licensing being used as a private governance tool, in the sense it has been used in the United States, where no exceptions on grounds of ordre public or morality exist in the patent system. It aims to test whether the private governance of genome editing technologies could adequately protect human and animal welfare if there are no barriers to the grant of patents or necessity for claim limiting language in Europe.

Biography

Ozlem is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, recipient of the Herchel Smith Scholarship. She is a Deputy Article Editor at Queen Mary Law Journal.

She completed her LLB in 2022 at Bilkent University in Turkey and her LLM in 2023 at QMUL, specialising in intellectual property, and wrote a dissertation about the patentability of human genome germline editing technologies in Europe, receiving a distinction. She was awarded the Evershed Sutherland Prize for her Fashion IP essay, as well as the Roy Goode Scholarship for her LLM.

At Queen Mary’s pro bono commercial law clinic, qLegal, Ozlem supervised postgraduate law students on Public Legal Education deliverables, including workshops, videos, and annotated model articles, and supervised multidisciplinary teams for their Legal Design Consultancy Projects.

Her research interests include intellectual property, life sciences, healthcare, bioethics, and animal use in science.

Research