New Technique Makes Most Gene Patents Irrelevant

Billy the Mountain writes "This Scientific American article, Legal Circumvention, describes a technique for circumventing gene patents whereby living cells are coaxed into expressing genes, especially those genes currently held under patents. Although, would-be exploiters of genes are prevented by patent restrictions from constructing a particular sequence and replicating it, patent law cannot be enforced in instances where an existing cell or organism is caused to express any of these patented genes and proteins."

Comments

Too bad

[Pay The Fuck Up!]

It's really too bad that anti-circumvention legislation hasn't yet been passed for genomics.

This kind of technique, clever as it is, will most certainly stifle innovation in the biotech industry as companies and investors will choose not to fund promising research because they will understand, more clearly than ever now in an era of DeCSS and Kazaa Lite, that any yahoo using this technique will be able to reverse-engineer a carefully developed gene sequence simply and cheaply.

It's a good thing I don't have Parkinson's disease, or another serious illness that genomic therapy might be able to solve, given a few more years and the environment of innovation necessary to promote such promising research. Investors will simply take their money elsewhere, and the great cures of the twenty-first century will go unfound. By the time I'm old enough to need such therapy (I'm only 41) I suspect this unwise loophole will have been closed.