Izac, Laurent (2018) Marketing through the use of private law contracts. In: Public Regulations of Tumor Banks: Establishment, Heritage Status, Development and Sharing of Human Biological Samples BIOY, Xavier (ed.) Springer International Publishing. pp. 106-118. ISBN 978-3-319-90563-1

Abstract

The possibility to organize the marketing of biobanks through the use of private law contracts may seem doubly surprising. Indeed, each of the two themes included in this proposal – marketing and private law - seem to go against the first intuition of biobanks to be removed from the temptation of commodification inherent in things of economic value and that, because of their nature and of their particular vocation, they escape private law for the benefit of public law. However, this first intuition is immediately contradicted by the finding that there is already some contractual practice providing a form of marketing of biobanks. Just consider the conventions of making available all or part of certain collections. There are sometimes real cessions for the benefit of third parties that are not necessarily public people.