Slashdot Mirror
Dolly Cloning Method Patented
Cy Guy writes "The BBC is reporting that Roslin Institute, along with two government agencies that helped fund the research, has been awarded a UK patent for the technology used to produce a clone of Dolly the Sheep in 1996.
Roslin has already been sold an exclusive license for the technology to the U.S. company Geron for $45M.
"
Can somebody give any good reason in defense of the patent system?
Let's talk about typical excuses for keeping the patent.
Excuse (1) : It rewards the innovators and thus encourages innovation.
Answer:
Scientific discoveries have been done and will be done without any
patent system. Patenting slows down freedom of utilzing the fruits
those discoveries.
Innovation and inventions like TCP/IP, WWW, HTML, XML would have been
far less successful they were patented. Internet as we know today
would not have existed and there would have been BBSes operated by AOL
and Microsoft.
So, the patent system serves the purpose of creating new monopolies or
entrenching the current ones. Patents just raise barriers to entry for
new smaller innovative players to the market. That's why established
big market players love the patent system and they patent everything
that comes to mind. Patents are used as tools to reduce competition
and thus hinders innovation.
Excuse (2) : The inventors need to eat too and recoup the cost.
Answer:
Then let the inventor keep his/her technology a trade secret. If that
technology is really that non-obvious, then he would get a significant
headstart in the market before the competitors can reverse-engineer it
or come up with their own competitive invention. Keep/make
reverse-engineering legal but keep stealing trade-secret illegal.
Another question rises - there are mentioned governmental agenices. Those are usually funded with state's (i.e., people's) money, not? And then they go and patent the thing which was the product of their research, and take all the money to itselves? Am I misunderstanding something or this is somehow strange?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
This is a genuinely innovative, non-obvious process, AFAICT, which means I think it's fair for them to patent it. But, if a mad scientist were to use the process to clone themselves, which one would they sue?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Biotech companies fall in and out of existence with incredible rapidity these days. Imagine the potential wealth that could be had if a particular biotech company was able to patent the process of growing a living and breathing Wooly Mammoth, an event that has a real potential of happening.
And how long before somebody figures out that kids would simply love a picacho(sp?) that was a real living and breathing animal. Biotech has the capacity to give us wonderful medical advancements, but I think it's a dangerous tool to be put in the hands of the impulse driven public.
It was funny when the Flinstones used animals as tools ... I wonder if it will still be humorous when we start to.
RFC2119
Although I'm not a big fan of patents in general, I have to say that this one seems reasonable. It certainly meets the criterea of novelty and usefulness that seem to be lacking in so many software patents.
It could be argued that it is the construction of a particular type of machine - a biological machine. Just because the parts are made of cells doesn't mean that this is no less a mechanism.
It could be argued in Philosophy 101, but not in a patent infringrement lawsuit. The patent is on a process, not a physical construction.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I hope no one comes along today and starts complaining about patents in this thread. Yes, some patents appear to be bogus (one-click shopping springs to mind) but this is a well deserved patent, in my eyes. After all, if cloning were a simple feat that didn't require years of research and millions of dollars in funding, then we'd have seen cloned sheep years ago, and cloned dinosaurs would be much closer to reality than they are today (which is pretty distant).
Last night The Irish Times hosted a lecture by Ian Wilmut (excellent talk, btw), and during the q&a he was asked about patenting. His reply was that the UK government was cutting back on research, and that the Roslin Institute needed the money. On the back of the patent, they were able to get investment and increase spending; pre-investment they were spending GBP400,000 a year, and they're able to spend ten times as much now.
He also pointed out that the Institute doesn't qualify for Wellcome Trust grants, leaving patents as the most obvious method for paying the bills and increasing their research budget.
It's not a bad patent, but it depends on intent. The intent here seems to be to protect themselves while telling everyone else how to do it too.
:-)
:-)
However, I don't like patents in general. So therefore, I am going to patent the splicing of genes from two homo-sapiens, to create a third homo-sapien with characteristics from the first two.
(I'll let the crowd figure that one out.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Thanks for posting this. I agree that the biological side of things could be improved. There are quite a lot of important Open/Free bio-informatics sites and projects. I know that the EBI is pretty committed and there are links available through the Scientific Applications on Linux site. Perhaps it's such a large area that it would be a good thing to have an independent /.-like site that provided forums for these discussions - taking sci.molbio etc to a nicer medium, it could allow for sharing of graphics which would help some awkward discussions.
While this certainly seems to be a reasonable application of patent law, rewarding a genuinely impressive advancement of the state of the art, I wonder what kind of precedent this sets.
After all, this is not a machine or mechanism, but a procedure developed in the course of scientific research.
To what degree will this inhibit research into improvements on the method?
What if somebody patented a medical operation? "I'm sorry, Doctor, if you remove that tumor we'll have to sue you."
It depends on the definition of "entire human"! If I make a clone of myself that is complete except for some specific traits I don't want to keep anyway (for example, the whole aging thing) would I still be complying with the patent agreement.
Human Cloning is a moral and ethical argument, it should NOT be left up to lawyers to work out! Anytime we let the law dictate our moral code we tend to get ourselves in trouble (for example, prohibition, abortion, euthanasia, etc.)
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I agree with you, except it can be unreasonable to expect this to work. I mean, I won't say much about government, but academic institutions can really use that revenue. Tuition costs only make up for a small percent of a university's income (speaking for Canadian Universities...). The rest comes from other sources, such as government funding (which is becoming less) and from spinoff businesses from university research and development.
If the university didn't try to turn up a profit, the university could not exist. Tuition from students is not nearly enough to cover the costs of operation.
I'd hardly lump Linux into the same group with major scientific accomplishment! Cloning *nix is completely different than cloning sheep. One is a massive and repeatable chunk of code finished in a few years; the other is a ethically-charged medical proceedure relying in hundreds of years of research.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Perhaps you should switch to raising rats. They're smarter than your average lawyer, smell better, and will never bite the hand that feeds them.
What do you call 1,000 dead lawyers? A good start!
.sig: Now legally binding!
along with two government agencies that helped fund the research
The method is being patented so that those who funded the research can use it as a source of revenue. The UK Government is funded by the people of the United Kingdom (obviously).
They should use the patent for what benefits the people the most: release it to the scientific community in general (for any use). The UK Government is not a business. It should not be trying to turn a profit.
Isn't there some sort of unwritten rule that says academic and government institutions work for the benefit of the scientific community, not in an attempt to gather revenue? Apparently not, or it's being ignored. Oh well.
-V
Hosting for Creators: http://rpg-works.net
Researchers patent the scientific method!
Hosting for Creators: http://rpg-works.net
I gather this patent allows them to corner the world market for CLONED SHEEP, which could potentially run into the BILLIONS of dollars over the next decade.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
WASHINGTON -- In a move which surprised relatively few people, scientists have patented the cloning technique known as "embryo splitting". This technique involves forcing an embryo to split in two in the early stages of development.
It was pointed out that prior art existed, in the form of twins born naturally. Geoff Carpenter, the patent lawyer who represented the scientists, commented "Just because a technique which is exactly the same in almost every respect already exists does not mean that it is prior art." The lawyer went on to add "Besides, it's not likely that God will sue us. He's much too busy with the gene patenting crowd at the moment."
More as it develops.
[Disclaimer: The above was a work of fiction, a bit of humor. Please don't interpret it as flamebait -- the actual patent discussed in this topic seems to be pretty valid, as nothing like it exists or has existed.]
-Denor
First, he was "sitting on the back of the giants" - there was huge research in this field going for years. He didn't start with nothing: he definitely was the first one to get to the point of having a clone of a mammal not derived from embryo cells, but there are still some important issues. I wonder whether this patent is going to stop the scientific community from doing further research.
This patent is much more disturbing then the one from Amazon (after all, one click, two clicks, who cares, how much time you spend on reading the book you've bought with this marvellous technology?). It will hamper some of the most important research fields in modern medicine, like getting finally xenotransplants work.
If everyone patented every scientific discovery the way Wilmut did you wouldn't be reading slashdot now. And Wilmut wouldn't have had even the chance of starting his research. On the other hand - yes, I agree, the team at Roslin Institute is responsible for the breakthrough - namely, choosing the right cell cycle stage for nuclear transfer. Remember, he did not invent the nuclear transfer, which has been conducted for the first time in 1952.
Regards,
January
P.S. Two links for you:
The Cloning of Dolly, a nice and easy explanation what is this nuclear transfer all about and how cloning works, and
A brief history of nuclear transfer, a nice essay at the Roslin Institute.
Unfortunately, those of you who have no access to "Nature" cannot read the full article, but I put some exerts here. Actually, it was my today's slashdot submission (rejected, of course - I have never seen anything posted to slashdot referring to any good biological site). I thought the article is interesting, because it targets the whole scientific community (there is hardly a biologist out there not reading "Nature"), and is the first article in such a journal which mentions Linus Torvalds and Linux, therefore making these names known to a large number of scientists who never heard them before. In a certain way, it could bring Linux more publicity then an editorial in "Times".
Regards,
January
These researchers have a formula to produce clones. They are only trying let everyone know exactly how their process works, while protecting their lifes work.
This is exactly what the patent process is supposed to do. Otherwise these researchers would keep their work secret and that would hold back other peoples work. People would have to reinvent the wheel everytime they wanted to do any research at all.
They are not abusing the patent process by trying to patent life or something obvious to anyone. They aren't broadly trying to patent the whole idea of cloning, only one method of doing so.
This is a _good_ thing.
-- Never make a general statement.