Patent Nonsense

ziriyab writes: "This article from The Guardian, after a few paragraphs of corporation bashing, gives an interesting history of two countries (Switzerland and the Netherlands) who flourished without IP laws. The article, while not necessarily suggesting that the abandonment of patent protection is an essential precondition for development, seems to indicate that it can, in the right circumstances, be an effective tool."

Comments

Gene Patents

[President Chimp Toe]

I found these points interesting:

Novartis was one of the companies which successfully lobbied for the European convention allowing companies to patent genes

New global trade rules have also allowed big corporations to patent crop varieties and, in effect, the genes of plants, animals and human beings.

Even without going into ethical debates, gene patenting is notoriously dubious. The standards that these companies apply to patenting genes is very poor at best. My patent law is not up to scratch, so i would be happy if someone could point me in the right direction on this. However, my genetic knowledge is rather good ;-)

Essentially, companies (such as novartis) cast a very wide net when patenting genes. Alot of the time, they dont actually do anything particularly pro-active when attempting to discover them. They essentially take a pool of all genes expressed in a certain tissue ("mRNA") and randomly sequence these genes. And then slap a patent on them. This is quite clearly discovery. Furthermore, it is cheap, non-directional, quick and easy.

Originally, companies like novartis argued that cloning genes would take a strategy of e.g. specifically identifying genes causing a disease. This takes alot more effort and money, and is more likely to have medical significance. Therefore it is easier to argue that patenting is to some degree fair.

However, the first strategy is quite clearly against patenting law (even the stretched definition for gene patenting). For example, I often see "patents" for DNA sequences of the gene MYB (which I know quite well ;-), despite the fact that it was originally identified in 1986. If this isnt prior art, I do not know what is.

This is a result of the essentially random, "wide-net" strategy the companies are utilising. Even worse, it is trivial to check (using a homology search) whether there is "prior art" on a gene or not. But the companies do not do this.

BUT I COULD. And may well do. I have been thinking about comparing the database of patented DNA sequences against those in the public domain (It will take some time to set up, which i dont have right now, and significant computer resources, which i dont have right now - help anyone? reply to this as above email wrong ;-) . It will show huge proportion of "patented" sequences have prior art.

But who would I go to with these results? Could the companies be held responsible? If, so what would be the result?

Random Euro-URLs

[guerby]

The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).

Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).

In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.

And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.

We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.

--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

Re:Medicine

[richieb]

The companies whose years of R&D and millions of dollars created a safe and effective medicine need compensation for this, or they won't produce drugs for diseases that effect mainly the Third World.

Actually a lot of their research depends on basic science done in publicly funded institutions. For example, the HIV virus was isolated by scientist at the NIH and equivalent organization in France(I know there is some controversies there).

If you actually look at the budgets of the large drug companies, they spend more on marketing than research. For example see this article.