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Cancer Mouse Not Patentable in Canada
Proaxiom writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting the Supreme Court of Canada ruled today that OncoMouse, the so-called 'Harvard Mouse' that is especially prone to cancer, cannot be patented under Canadian law. The hapless rodent still enjoys patent protection in the U.S., Japan and much of Europe. So there is at least one place where higher life forms cannot be patented, but I am not familiar enough with the intricacies of international intellectual property treaties to figure out the consequences of the discrepancy. I'm sure countless IANAL's will be willing to offer opinions."
the so-called 'Harvard Mouse' that is especially prone to cancer...So there is at least one place where higher life forms cannot be patented
Prone to Cancer = higher life form? You're views are ass backward, friend.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You can wander through the legalisms, but basically I've been uncomfortable with the overlap between the doman of patent law and, well, God (and/or whatever evolutionary variant one subscribes to -- I'm on the science side of the fence, but "God" is a heck of a lot more poetic).
I wonder if this could cause U.S.-Canadian tensions? The IP people in the states are riding high these days.
So there is at least one place where higher life forms cannot be patented
Mainly because there are no higher forms of life there.
Sorry, had to say it, but I actually love Canada.
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/ harvard.en.html
Carousel is a lie!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this is the same country in which the farmer was sued for using seeds from last year's canola crop, rather than buying them (again) from Monsanto.
but the biochemical method for manipulating the genese of the mouse to create the Harvard mouse is.
Patent law tends to be highly compartmentalized between nation-states and as such the Canadian ruling will probably have little direct effect on the patents held in other countries.
:(
The most it may do would be to keep alive the debate over whether higher life forms can actually be patented. And then, of course, there's the possibility of companies moving research in this area to Canada to avoid licensing costs.
All of that said, I feel sorry for the mouse.
Do they have to pay a royalty?
"Congratulations, it's a boy! That'll be $1.50."
Does this mean we can all move to Canada and have a bunch of sickly mouse pets to play with? Oh what joy. ;>
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
Hmm... it seems to me they can smuggle itself! Just put a large box with the mice on one side of a bordes, a large piece of cheese on another, and open the box.
Mice will go to another border and IANAL, but its seems to me that it's perfectly legal - they will just migrate!
What's Richard Gere been doing lately?
No, actually it means the opposite, unless someone sues someone else... like always.
If the mice are not patentable in Canada, then anyone can genetically produce them, or however they feel like it. This would lead to lower costs of cancer prone mice... so Canada could have many exported to the U.S.... If they don't die of cancer first.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Researchers in the US are also smuggling in tax-free cigarettes for the mice to smoke during the studies.
From the ruling:
:)
"Although Parliament enacted special legislation for the protection of plant breeders, it did not address other higher life forms. Moreover, the passage of the Plant Breeders' Rights Act demonstrates that mechanisms other than the Patent Act may be used to encourage inventors to undertake innovative activity in the field of biotechnology.[...] If a special legislative scheme was needed to protect plant varieties, a subset of higher life forms, a similar scheme may also be necessary to deal with the patenting of higher life forms in general. It is beyond the competence of this Court to address in a comprehensive fashion the issues associated with the patentability of higher life forms."
In other words, patents related to plants have their own set of laws. They were not meant to include animals and the Supreme Cort does not want to take the responsibility of something that Parliament should do.
At least, that is my interpretation
can't export them to the U.S.
As they violate a U.S. patent.
So, companies can do research with them cheaper in Canada and the results CAN be used in the U.S.
But the mice cannot be exported to ny country where the patent stands.
This will become an issue as biotech organisms start appearing en masse (whenever that might be). Right now, there's no real incentive to produce, in Canada, nonpatented oncomice, simply because most of the countries to which you'd export (e.g., the U.S., Japan) would allow infringement suits. As the suite of gengineered organisms expands, however, expect a great deal of political and legal pressure for Canada to fall in line with the other states.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
and keep them from reproducing without my permission?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Walt Disney must be spinning in his grave!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Does this mean that smuggling OncoMice across the border to Canadian medical researchers will become the new Hot Item on the black market?
A bigger question- can I patent the process of smuggling OncoMice across the border?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
One of the key features of existing international treaties over intellectual property is the idea of "national treatment". Roughly speaking the idea is that nations have to treat non-nationals the same as nationals. For example, if Candian law grants Candian authors a copyright in their works for life + 50 years, then Candian law should grant the same sort of copyright, for the same term, to non-Candian authors. So national treatment is a pretty weak requirement - it allows nations to have any sort of intellectual property law they like, so long as that law does not discriminate between nationals and non-nationals.
As far as the national treatement requirement goes, the only constraint on Candian law in this case is that, if Canadian courts reject such patent claims made by US citizens/corportations, then they must reject similar claims made by Canadian citizens/corportations.
In addition to the national treatment requirement, treaties have also tried to establish certain standards concerning the nature and terms of intellectual property rights, but these IP standards do not get down to the details of what can or cannot be patented. In general these IP standards have been designed to avoid all the really difficult questions about intellectual property, and they tend to be weakly enforced in any case.
So, as far as these additional IP standards go, it is highly unlikely that this Candian court ruling will conflict with any of them.
However, the fact that Canadian courts have now taken up a position against this sort of patent makes it less likely that this sort of patent will ever make it into the IP standards established by *future* international treaties.
It was a patent issue.
And it's not that far fetched that they won; it wasn't an "accident". The guy KNEW it was monsanto's seed. It wasn't forced on him. He knew they had a patent on it as well. He took the gamble.
What you have to realize is that the legal system is not as convoluted in Canada. Though this time, the guy might have been found to be doing something wrong, under slightly different circumstances, monsanto would lose (say, if the guy really had no idea it had happened).
You can't just compare one ruling and declare the Canadian justice system to be as screwed up as the US. Remember, we have 10x less population, over a larger area, and a system that is *FAR* more flexible and less complex than the US system. Not everything is Black & White in the Canadian legal system, nor do we pretend it is.
All this patent and IP stuff must have come from Egypt. I now know why we don't know how the pyramids were built. The folks that owned the companies doing the work patented and copyrighted everything. They punished anyone that spoke of it with the DMCA (Digging and Movers Copyright Act) and thus soon the technology was forgotten.
This is probably why we don't have any of the music or movies from that era as well. They were covered by the MPAA (Movies and Pyramids Acrhitects Association) and the RIAA (Ra Is An Artist).
If this stuff keeps up, it won't be too many years until everything here will be forgotten as well, due to the fact that no one can say anything, do anything, or even think about anything.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
I'm a big fan of the notion that there's a distinct if somewhat grey line between Invention and Discovery, and that only Invention should be patentable. Discovering a new species of mouse in the wild does not give one the right to patent it. Inventing a new species of mouse through genetic manipulation does, although it raises ethical questions, especially if applied to a more emotionally developed mammal like a dolphin, a dog, or a human.
11*43+456^2
Canada is very unfriendly to some rodents, yet worships others. We have Wiarton Willie our groundhog in Ontario, the beaver as our national animal and on our nickel, Gainer the gopher [lovable SK Roughriders CFL mascot], yet in Alberta we have outlawed rats! Now we've outlawed patented mice! This tramples on rodent rights!
CBC's version of events
The mouse genome project - A success!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Whose the tumor riddled rat that isn't patentable at all?
C-A-N C-E-R M-O-U-S-E. Cancer Mouse! CancerMouse.
We treat him with drugs and hope he doesn't die, die, die.
Michael Loves Me!
FYI, in Canada:
... but you get the drift).
1) Medical procedures are not patentable. This is basically to prevent the formation of a monopoly on a life-saving procedure. (e.g., If someone invented a procedure to repair spinal cords, she couldn't patent it and charge a zillion dollars, because that would limit poor people's access to the technique.)
2) A life-saving drug (e.g., cure for cancer), if they're the only such life-saving drug available, is not patentable.
3) Some drug patents and trademarks seem to be quickly lost in Canada (while others are not). In the U.S., the trademark "Aspirin" has been lost to common use, so any generic manufacturer can claim that they make aspirin. Not so in Canada -- only Bayer can claim this trademark. In terms of patents, we have lots of generic drugs being manufactured that I don't think they can offer in generic form in the U.S. yet (e.g., generic forms of Reactine & Allegra). Not that I'm complaining -- our drugs are dirt cheap in comparison to what U.S. citizens pay (e.g., a month's supply of Claritin in the U.S. costs over $90 USD according to a recent Reuters article, but costs me only about $18 CAD -- this is due, in part of course, to the fact that it has been available over the counter here for some time
For more comparisons of patent law differences:
http://www.dww.com/articles/how_do_you.htm
-kris
Screw the OncoMouse. How many people are going to buy one? Science geeks and Poindexters is all. I told DuPont (when they had the rights to it) that the big bucks would be in OncoHamster, OncoRabbit, OncoKitty, and OncoPuppy. Every parent would buy a small mammal for the kids if they were guaranteed that in six months - once the kid stopped feeding it and playing with it and was generally bored with the whole ownership thing, the animal would go off to the big pet shop in the sky.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I think we'll be smuggling them into the USA, not the other way around. Throwing in a free Generic Cancer Mouse with each pack of smuggled smokes the scientists import for their cancer studies.
I'm picturing little wooden-legged mice saying "Arrrr!"...
--- http://foo.ca
"IANAL, but its seems to me that it's perfectly legal - they will just migrate!"
This means that, since it facilitates the theft of intellectual property, cheese is now illegal under the DMCA.
It makes me really uncomfortable that companies are applying for and the Federal Government is issuing patents for genes and all sorts of life forms.
I understand the motivation for this: companies who develop these "products" want to protect and insure a return on their investments. I think that it's OK to patent the *procedure* or *process* used to generate these things, but I don't like the precident set by corporations or individuals patenting what are essentially naturally-occuring things.
Think about it... suppose Glaxo finds a "cancer gene" which, perhaps, can be used to predict that someone with the gene will develop a particular form of cancer (I know that such things may already have been discovered). Suppose that I possess the gene. Now, if Glaxo patents this gene, they are essentially asserting intellectual property rights on part of my body, on my DNA. I really don't like even the idea of that. The ramifications and implications of this area of law, in my opinion, are still unclear and potentially frightening.
On a more general note, patent law is supposed to encourage innovation and development. However, increasingly, it's being used to enforce monopolies (look at Microsoft or Gemstar). And, in the area of health care and medicine, it often has the negative side-effect of pricing many people out of life-saving or even life-enhancing treatments and procedures.
In my humble lay-opinion, our (the US's) intellectual property laws are in dire need of some revision and rethinking, particularly in the biomedicine and information technologies realms. Patents should be issued more judiciously and circumspectly and should carry much shorter expiration dates. Once a company has earned back their development costs and made a modest profit, they should yield their technology to the public to encourage further development and growth and, particularly with respect to medical technology, to make their products accessible to people in a larger number of income and class brackets.
I'm not a socialist, and I generally don't approve of the government interfering in the private sector. On the other hand, I do believe that government should encourage personal and corporate responsibility. Biotech companies, obstensively, exist not to make billions of dollars in profits, but to save and improve lives. Intellectual Property laws can and should be used to encourage a greater balance between profit and public benefit.
If someone in the US breeds mice, and by accident a strain happens to have similar or identical DNA sequences which give it the big C then is this a violation of patent? And what if the genes have never been sequenced, it's just known that they get cancer and are sold for research? If retrospectively we find out that they violate patents, it would see a bit stupid that the mice breeding (under only some human control and with the inbuilt unpredictability of fertilisation and DNA replication) could be illegal.
Patenting nature just seems very wrong to me. Just because I decode some of nature's best work shouldn't mean that I own it.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Go read his website. He didn't know it was "Monsanto's seed," he never bought seed from Monsanto (preferring to breed his own for the last half-century or so, and he certainly didn't steal anything from Monsanto. In fact, he only found out about the cross-polination when he was trying to eliminate "volunteer" canola growing where he didn't want it and used Roundup.
Experts in the subject already insist that it's virtually if not utterly impossible to find canola, corn, and soybean seed without traces of (patented) genetically-modified genes in them. Monsanto, however, is the big offender, in that it ruthlessly goes after people who wind up with "their" proprietary genes in crops. It's also totally possible to find ultra-hybridized varieties of seed containing more than one company's proprietary genes. That comes from natural cross-polination, and other forms of non-crossbreeding contamination, not theft.
All of which just blatantly shows why this Supreme Court decision is a good idea, and why Mr. Schmeiser should get Monsanto to pay through the nose for wrecking his organic hybrid canola variant with their genetically modified strain. I wonder if this court case will help?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.