Slashdot Mirror
SARS Researcher Files Preemptive Patent Application
ocean-navigator writes " CP Press is reporting that the B.C. Cancer institute has filed a defensive patent application to ensure the information remains in the public domain. The lead scientist asked specifically for his name to NOT be on the application, as he feels that he made a discovery, not an invention. Nice to see a few people with principles, in my own backyard too!"
Is there a nonprofit set up to do this sort of thing?
Would the eff or ACLU be willing to do this?
What other patents have been filed with the same effect?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
the world tear a greedy one a new one.
There's only so much shady stuff that passes under the radar when everyone is danger.
I say let them try to patent, see what ensues.
What a missed opportunity!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
On the other hand, he can create an international organization which might get better fundings from the UNO's medical organizations members...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Who wants to be known as the guy who sells the rights to SARS?
It seems to me that politics and the likes has lost perspective.
Is there not a problem in society when somebody is patenting a gene to keep in the free market? I am glad that they are doing it, but I see a bigger problem.
Are politicians that DAFT to see what is going wrong?
It seems to me that politicians are making simple stuff complex. The more and more I see this stuff I really wonder if Western civilization is collapsing. Somebody said this once to me on flight to Boston in 2002. They said 9/11 was the high water mark in Western Civilization. Like the Roman empire that eventually disappeared so too will the Western society....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
It's nice to see research regarding a disease that "KILLS HUMANS WELL" put in the public domain, research that should be in the world's best interest to be public domain, and not nessicarly the IP property of specific companies. If only the same logic was applied to AIDS back in the 80's.
I'm all for people making a profit from research, but it becomes immoral to put the bottom line above human life in order to profit.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
This would mean that anyone who gets SARS is obviously a dirty rotten patent infringer, as they are making, using and (well, hopefully not selling) the "invention."
Someone should call WIPO and get the Chinese government to enforce patent rights and stop this blatant piracy of our technology.
And everyone should deeply respect the plethora of enforceable patent rights attached to a $75 U.S. provisional patent application.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Nice to see behaviour that's both principled and commercially astute.
a world in progress...
The problem I believe is as our civilisation and society grow as a whole, each individuals sphere of knowledge and influence shrinks. We're knowing more and more about less and less and having to rely on communication and interaction to maintain the overall expansion of knowledge. I think we've now reached a state where as individuals the majority of us would be incapable of functioning/surviving alone.
I rely on other people to provide me with food and shelter - but then my providers rely on my area of knowledge, IT - my supermarket relies on logistics. Even within my own field I'd be screwed by myself. I vaguely know how my PC works - couldn't build one myself though. Not even the keyboard. Not even the plastic it's made from. Or the ink of the keys. Or the copper in the wires
My basic point is that the Roman empire collapsed due to over expansion in a purely geographical sense leading to communication breakdown. Western civilisation won't fall due to the geographical problem - but maybe there's a critical mass where the sheer complexity of interaction needed for day to day function will be so large it becomes unstable (or too easily destabilised).
That's like with Open Source Software:
No commercial owner == no or low funding == less motivation of the developers == frustration and distress == more terrorism.
So, if you make software proprietary, you do something against terrorism!
Alcoholism does not necessarily equate to frequency. You can drink a lot and not be an alcoholic and you can not drink very often and be an alcoholic. My grandmother was an alcoholic and she drank probably once every few months. It's really all about drinking in spite of the serious consequences your drinking has on others and on your own life (such as while hurting loved ones, while ignoring committments, etc.).
Is this not way off topic, though?
But this is beyond a joke. Patenting a naturally occuring virus???? I'm sorry, but the fact someone has to file a defensive patent is ridiculous. Have patent laws gotten so god damn awful that we have this total nonsense?
Yes, I am aware some companies have patented genes of the human body that are naturaly occuring. I regard that just as absurd and even dangerous. No one has the right to lock away from others stuff liek that. for no reason and no motive is that justified. for no reason and no motive is the patenting of naturally occuring substances right. You are not inventing after all. However, process to do with those genes or substances that require human intervention (say.. a vaccine), yeah well there is a case there. This is a sad indictment on human society if we truly believe we can claim to something naturally occuring in a patent. Prior Art after exists.
While the net effect of this patent application might be a good thing for the world with respect to SARS, it kindof sets a bad precedent, namely by showing that something that someone feels SHOULDN'T be patentable IS, in fact, patentable.
It'd be better if they could just register the discovery and classify it as a non-patentable discovery. Not everyone who files a patent is going to be as generous as this doctor, and now every greedy SOB out there has a precedent to file a patent that shouldn't be approved.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
No patent? Err... have you read the article? It's about someone patenting the genome to prevent less noble groups from doing that, as:
m$-like farmaceutic company's patent = high prices = much money = rich researchers + little more money for research = dead poor poople who can't avord the expensive cures, as is happening nowdays with 'cures' for AIDS...
1. Patents aren't yet world-wide, but SARS apparently is already so. If the DNA sequence is out in the open, why should a researcher in China, say, respect the patent in the US and pay royalties? In other words, how is this a windfall?
2. From the article:
a. Abraham said the initial plan is to ensure 50 per cent of any money goes to the research facility and the remaining 50 per cent to the scientists.
b. "Patenting per se is not a bad thing," he said. "One proper reason for patenting is to make sure it's freely available to everybody."
What is the point in free avblty., when royalties have to be paid for access? These idiots have to exposed for what they are. It's like MS saying they implement Open XML standards in O2K3, but these standards can't work without O2K3.
3. Marra said: " "This stems largely from a personal belief that DNA sequence is a discovery as opposed to an invention and should not be patentable".
This is hypocrisy at it's best. If discoveries ought not to be patentable, why then should he patent it at all? Why not put it out on a web page with a datestamp, to ensure nobody else patents this later?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Ah-ha? And where does the cure come from if research doesn't get funding from the sales?
I'd say it's better to at least have a cure and heal some people than not to have a cure at all.
BOO! TERRO
So far all I'm reading is how evil pharmaceutical companies are, that they want to profit from their inventions and keep progressing as a company. Why is software sold? Why is music sold? Because it took someone long and hard hours to create what you're enjoying. And for that, they should be compensated. That compensation should reflect the cost of creation.
For a musician that would include musical instruments, recording technicians, etc. For a software developer that would include computers, training, beta testing. For a pharmaceutical company that requires a LOT more. First you need to identify the etiological agent, the cause of the disease, and then you need to identify the biochemical effect on the body. Then you need to identify a potential synthesizeable chemical to change the effect. You are already talking YEARS and you're nowhere near selling the product, this is all expense and no promise of reward because at any time you could find a flaw and the whole project goes belly up. Once you have narrowed your potential therapeutic you can apply to test it in humans. Pending approval there are three phases of 6 months to 1 year clinical trials. And remember, you haven't made $1 yet.
So you've put years and millions or even billions of dollars into the development of this drug and people are whining about drug companies recouping this money and turning a profit in order to develop the next drug that will keep them on this planet for another couple years.
Rehab is for quitters.
I'm sticking with my current civilisation, we get the orgies and general debaucherous behaviour to look forward to before I start stockpiling the tin cans.
filed a defensive patent application to ensure the information remains in the public domain.
There is no need for a "defensive patent" to keep something in the public domain. Patents must be useful, new & innovative and non-obvious. As soon as something is made public, it becomes non-patentable.
They might claim it's to keep things in the public domain, but there is no need to do so. I suspect it's just PR while they hope to make money from their "public domain" patents.
There's nothing wrong with patents to make money, cut out the PR crap.
Ah-ha? And where does the cure come from if research doesn't get funding from the sales?
And let those who can't pay for it die? Survival of the fittest, social darwinism (that is *not* just naziism), woohoo. I think we shouldn't go there.
I can tell you were funding partly *should* come from... goverment funding, and resources given freely by companies, because those should see that finding a cure and keeping it cheap is more important than making a profit.
Of course, that doesn't happen in the US, and the company bit doesn't happen allot elsewhere, either. But fortunatly, this article states that they'll keep 50% of the money to do more research with. You can say allot, but that is actually enough. I personally think it's sad that it's necessary to do it this way.
He drank during a work week! He might even have smoked a couple of ciggeretes. Once, when in college, he may have walked past some guys who were smoking a joint. Quick, call the Feds, the man is a risk to society!
Your post is something only an asshole with a holier-than-thou attitude would post. Get over yourself and leave the rest of us alone you little cocksnot.
given : i do think too many people these days are utterly incapable of surviving on their own. I myself have taken prairie-landscape survival training from cadets and elsewhere, and am confident in my skills that even though life would thereafter suck a lot more, i could if i desired to survive.
read this if you have time... while i havn't seen the movie in question["the network"] it outlines a possibility that perhaps even though induvidually we are all worthless, we in doing so are *replacable*. western civilization has thrived because a lesser, and lesser amount of people actually mattered...at first the kings, barons, clergy, knights...then kings, and higher nobles, then kings and kings alone, then finally to democracy, where no one really matters, and all we are is replacable parts, akin to 1 Byte portions of a hard disk. sure we could store data or use them, but often we just let them sit idle and spin around.
in the meanwhlie, this approach has been really successful because as a society we can do many things, at one time, whereas induviduals can do very little, comparitively. i wouldn't pretend to know everything in the university of regina's library : but if you add all the students, profs and past students & profs, you'd probly get a pretty good percentage going.
most importantly, perhaps i'd like to point out something that really stuck out to me. All knowledge, to me relies on communication and interaction. without it our braincells would not pass data in the form of chemical-electric energy...knowing, to me, isn't a static process - it happens because things change. it happens because people are communicating. Last night, me and one of my coworker, lets call her vert, were moving in directions towards eachother, being very close to the same size[her a little smaller]... we both stopped, and our stopping got our minds going and she said something, something stupid and bickering...and i replied[she can be such a troll sometimes], and this turned into a 20-30 second discourse...stopped by which the cook local, 'boss', stepped in an said 'quit flirting you two'. [while i think she's more or less a descent human being, she'sjust...well..not my type] we both, at the same moment, stopped talking, turned around 180 degrees, and started moving away from eachother in perfect unison, saying nothing until we were out of sight. there was potential energy stored within us, in the form of underlying assumptions, which was reacted on, which produced predictable results. i think what happened, is momentarily, a consiousness of sorts was formed. The machine did understand chinese...i mean, the set of people known as me_and_vert understood that we were flirting. this is much more important than any induviduals "knowing" of anything, or at least different from it. it is through this "knowing" that i believe western civilization thrives on.
i used to think western civilization would fall apart as we know it...but what i did not ask myself was, if i know it, then what *is* exactly western civilization? a collective of capitalist-democracies with fair laws built so that all men are equal in the eyes of the government, and that no one is above the law, and that people have an intrinsic worth, and have rights because of this?
only when i realized that western civilization is a feudal state of people who allow power to be distributed... do you think the internet, in all its giving-us-the-people-a-voice will cause more freedom, change, or whatnot in the world? for every second we spend online the energy, in the form of cashmoney, is released back into the system, usually by ISPs but also by hardware manufacturers, Credit card companies, and making our workplaces a profit[or making our workplaces work]. you may gain energy by working, but by working you lose more than you gain. in effect the more you do online, the more powerful the regieme becomes. the more you work to pay for your ISP the more stronger the regeime b
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Thats be non-proportional.
Okay... I can (barely) understand patenting genetic code. Of which, I like to think that I have the exclusive rights to using my own genetic code. If RMS is reading this, he'd probably suggest that the human genome should be licensed under the GPL.
But how can an organization be granted a patent on an organism? I mean, at what point are people going to file for a patent on the Zebra?
The world is not a perfect place. In this case you can choose from two alternatives: 1) you encourage drug research by allowing the companies to make profit, thus saving at least some lives, or 2) you take the idealistic no-profit course, slowly kill the drug industry, the poor people AND the people who otherwise could have afforded to pay for the drugs and survive.
I can tell you were funding partly *should* come from... goverment funding
Ok. That might work in a way. I know that there are brilliant scientists working on a piss-poor government pay for personal reasons (ideology, preference for academic environment, etc.) and they would contribute to the drug development. However, many other brilliant researchers would see the government funded drug research as both an academic and financial dead-end and would simply choose another field where their salary is more in line with the personal and financial investments they have had to make to get where they are.
and resources given freely by companies, because those should see that finding a cure and keeping it cheap is more important than making a profit.
A company that does not aim to make profit and gives away its product is a dead company: again no drugs, more dead people.
I can see a clear parallel in your thinking between open source software development and drug research. Well, it just doesn't work like that in the latter case. Software is ideas. Drugs are concrete. You have personnel costs (or would you be willing to work for free?), infrastructure costs (any idea how much an R&D lab costs?) and trial costs (it may take 10 years for a drug to get from R&D stage to marketing).
BOO! TERRO
What's preemptive about this application? Any patent application is preemptive and tends to stifle research of others. If I read the article correctly, the patent holder doesn't even consider royalty-free licensing. So what's the big deal? Just another patent in the pharmaceutical sector which could ensure that developing countries won't have access to affordable SARS medicine in the future, should it become a widespread disease.
The world is not a perfect place. In this case you can choose from two alternatives: 1) you encourage drug research by allowing the companies to make profit, thus saving at least some lives, or 2) you take the idealistic no-profit course, slowly kill the drug industry, the poor people AND the people who otherwise could have afforded to pay for the drugs and survive.
:P
As I stated, there's a nice way 'in between': exactly what researchers in this article are doing. Ensure that everything stays public domain, and take only the money you really need for research, and a moderate reward for yourselves (50% split over all researchers, with allot of the profit going to drug distributers isn't allot, I think). If I have my way, this shouldn't be neccesary, but well, I don't have it my way.
ware development and drug research. Well, it just doesn't work like that in the latter case. Software is ideas. Drugs are concrete. You have personnel costs (or would you be willing to work for free?)
In fact I would. That is if accomodations etc. would be granted, I need those, obviously, but for something like this, I'd work for free if I had the know-how. I think that's exactly the problem: people have come to see unpayed work as unrewarded work, while that's definatly not the same. It should be a major reward to know you helped people get over SARS.
...or 3) you require research done on public money to remain in the public domain, instead of the current situation where private corporations steal it for their own private profit, and the hell to all the people that kills.
Perhaps the answer is -- ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WERE INFECTED!
Seriously, you can't have rights to a virus. Besides the fact that 1) it's already been created (prior art) and 2) viruses don't care about laws and such. I mean, seriously, what would you do if you owned the rights to a virus -- sue everyone who got sick from it?
"Yes, your honor, he caught my virus. I'm asking for both punitive and compensatory damages due to his *cough* alleged *cough* illness."
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
I doubt you would -- at least after spending 10+ years of your time and taking shitloads of student loan to get your PhD.
people have come to see unpayed work as unrewarded work
Any idea why people in general consider unpaid work as unrewarding work? I bet that by the time you hit your 30s and after working yourself to death for your degree, you'll realize that it really sucks to live in a crappy apartment in a crime-infested neighbourhood, eat cheap beans every day and take your laundry to an all-night laundromat because you cannot afford any better.
Asking for a better life is not selfish. You have studied hard and you contribute to the world by researching better drugs -- all you ask is a reward. Feeling good about helping people to get over AIDS or SARS does not magically change those slimy cold beans into a delicious meal.
BOO! TERRO
If the guy really want to be sure it becomes and stays public, all he has to do is declare his discovery as public, issue a written .nfo statement about GPL'ing all of it and dump his data on a few hundred servers...
Google cache and surfers mirrors will make the rest...
"Only Wimps make backup, real men post to an ftp and let people do the mirrors" Linus T, 24h before a full crash forced him to rewrite his kernel 8p
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
to ensure the information remains in the public domain
IANAL, but this is not how I read the article. Specifically, a representative of the BC cancer agency (the party applying for the patent) talks about generating royalties and revenues, and even about how the revenues are going to be allocated. How can they generate revenues if the information is "in the public domain" ?
All they really talk about is making sure no one group monopolizes access to the information. But maybe that's just good press, and far from a substantive pledge. Who knows what it will mean if they are granted the patent. In any case, it seems clear they're ready and willing to reap royalties and licensing fees.
I doubt you would
You don't know me.
Any idea why people in general consider unpaid work as unrewarding work? I bet that by the time you hit your 30s and after working yourself to death for your degree, you'll realize that it really sucks to live in a crappy apartment in a crime-infested neighbourhood, eat cheap beans every day and take your laundry to an all-night laundromat because you cannot afford any better.
Any idea in general why life without money can suck like that? Only because people are too selfish to look after eachother. Ever heared of welfare funds, btw? Here in Holland, stuff is arranged pretty good (that's gonna change, I'm afrad), so that even if you don't have the time to get a full-time job, you can still live very decently, and Holland's not unique. And where did you hear me say earning money is selfish? I'm just saying that it's way better to not only care about yourself, but about others too (I'm actually surprise you don't agree with me on that). The world really would be a better place if people'd do that, and you're argument that "the world is not perfect" doesn't mean that you can't try to make it a better place.
I don't see any reason why universities cannot patent their research and effectively place it in the "public domain" by not requesting royalities.
BOO! TERRO
Hmm, if I get a patent for something like ie the DNA sequence of the SARS virus should I not also be accountable for it's use? In this case shouldn't victims be able to sue the patent holder for damages??
Note that the linked article mentions a firm in Hong Kong that is seeking to patent the entire SARS virus.
Btw... how are mutations handled? Are they to be considered derived works??
Could you give me some more info about this AIDS scandal?
I never eard about that one...
I'd rather be sailing...
Wouldn't any other patents be invalid under prior art? After all, they announced it to the whole world. How could anyone possibly say they discovered it first when you could open a newspaper and see their earlier discovery announcement there?
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Seems to me those who hold the patents should pick up the tab for the mess.
"What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?" - Mister Rogers
If you had read the article, you would see that the issue at hand is patenting the actual genetic code of the virus. They're not talking about patenting a drug to cure it. The reason people have such a dislike for the drug companies is that they try and patent viruses, and animal genomes. Most people in their right minds can't figure out how the companies can claim patents (whether royalty free or not) to something that they didn't invent! Nature invented the virus, not some guy in a lab (unless this is a whole biological attach, but that I doubt). They're doing it all backwards -- getting a blueprint from the finished product, as opposed to making blueprints to a new product.
Let the drug companies recoup their costs for inventing usefull drugs to cure disease, etc. But patenting virus genomes is nothing more than a money grab, even if it's ostensibly "to keep the information in the public domain".
a naturally occuring disease that one did not make, then does this mean that one can bring patent violation suits against all those who contract the disease? Does this open the door for those who are involuntarily onfected for suing the patent holder for removal of the offensive material which they did not wish to purchase or license? (akin to someone mailing you a book, it is yours to do with as you want...)
the possibilities for legal mayhem astound me!
Nice to see a few people with principles, in my own backyard too!"
useless frog bastard. says he wouldn't turn hussein over even if they get him. how we perform regime change on that underpopulated outgrowth of british adultery!!
My two cents, and forgive me for not reading through all the posts. It seems that the general theme of those asking for reform is that the 'structures/systems/agencies/policies' need to reform themselves, "the fault is our slightly-malfunctioning government, which needs reform itself.".
I argue that there is no ediface called the government, the system or any such things. To borrow from the earlier work of A. Giddens, our collective actions (including our inactions), combine to create all these institutions. What we do and don't do, has major repercussions on the state of things. That said, we are collectively the "slightly-malfunctioning government". Our actions and in-actions allowed things to get to where they are now.
If we want patent-reform or insurance reform, and hope that the "system" will reform itself, then be prepared to be disappointed. As an example, look at how the MPAA has influenced laws in various American States. If there is some philosophical imperitive that directs our leaders to do the right thing, then some of the stuff that was passed recently would never have happened.
I'm not arguing against or for Capitalism, what does it matter at this point. Getting more people actively involved is what I'm concerned about.
Marx once wrote, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."
It seems to come down to that the institute is patenting the sequence, they do want to make money from it, they are just trying to put a positive spin on it. And the researcher, while opposed to it, is pretty much powerless to do anything about it and just tries to keep his name off the application.
Altogether, this is not a good sign.
This sounds similar to a recent high profile patent ruling. Here are some pre trial details:
What does the public think? Perhaps the most frightening aspect of gene patenting involves public policy. Amid public misconceptions of what is actually meant by patenting a gene and in an environment of constantly progressing technologies, there are patent infringement lawsuits drawing national attention.[163] A good guess at how the PTO's utility guidelines will hold up under challenge in the courts is likely to be demonstrated in the pending case where the University of Rochester sued G.D. Searle for patent infringement.[164]
The University of Rochester obtained a patent to the Cox-2 gene in April 2000. Almost immediately thereafter, Rochester filed suit against Pharmacia and its subsidiary, G.D. Searle.[165] Searle, a major pharmaceutical company, produces Celebrex, better known as 'super aspirin,' which acts as a chemical inhibitor to the protein encoded by the Cox-2 gene.[166] Rochester asserts patent rights to not only the sequence and protein product of the Cox-2 gene, but also to the method of using a drug to block the gene product and alleviate pain.[167] Although Searle admits to having used scientific findings on Cox-2 during its search for a pain-inhibiting drug, attorneys for Searle believe that the Rochester patent is invalid on grounds that the university has not given precise instructions for finding the drug inhibitor.[168]
Although issued before release of the new utility guidelines, the challenged claims are being examined in a manner similar to prong two of the new utility test.[169] This prong rejects patents for failing to adequately teach others how to use the claimed invention.[170] The court's ruling in this matter should reveal whether the new utility standards are sufficient to ensure patentability, or whether the guidelines will need some refining.
Given the number of academic institutions protesting patent applications on the grounds that university researchers will not be able to afford licensing fees, Rochester lends itself to an intriguing brand of hypocrisy when one of its attorneys states that "[s]omehow there is a school of thought that different rules should apply to basic research in medicine, and I don't think that washes under any kind of scrutiny."[171] Nonetheless, the University's tactics raised eyebrows when it asked a judge to force Searle to take the drug, which is currently being used by seven million people, off the market because Searle would not pay royalties.[172] Meanwhile, a "giddy" University of Rochester official remarked that this patent might be "the most lucrative in U.S. history."[173]
The judge ruled the patent invalid because it did not teach how to achieve the useful result (new drug production) but only pointed the way toward that result.
In short, although the '850 patent describes an assay for determining whether a given
compound possesses certain desired characteristics, and identifies some broad categories of compounds that might work, these descriptions, without more precise guidelines, amount to little more than "a starting point, a direction for further research."
U of Rochester stated that they would appeal.
BTW US PTO might not allow this SARS application based upon ultimate appeals court ruling of U or Rochester case.
what a silly bunch of people, trying to patent DNA!
... i mean when you're a kid, thats okay, but when you grow and still do bullshit like this ...
..
...
maybe i'll find the right gens for growing hair and nails and patent them. then everybody has to pay me!
I mean this stuff is NATURAL how can they patent a virus or a bacteria?
how about i patent my albino crow? i breed it over 10 years.
instead of spending money in protecting "their" code, they should spend money in making sure it doesn't (absolutly) get out of their labaratory. it's just as bad as atomics (any atomic).
and i think it speaks for itsself: a hongkok company wants to patent the code. i think they are like children palying with their own ficies
i mean where is humanity if you patent and medication. it's this ME ME ME mentalety again.
these people just forget that they are all living on the same planet and they can't just make alot of money and go to another planet
makes me sick to even have to think somebody is actually TRYING to patent gens! it's probably another level of racisem
and patents make em lazy! not fair. the company or people who are willing to work should get the chance and produce.
and again in this FAT company ONE or TWO researchers do all the hard work and who goes stupid-rich: the dumb fat lame ass at the top behind his mahagony desk... STUPId I SAY! MEGA ULTRA STUPID.
Oh i get it, these people in mangment are not even humans, they are aliens from an nother planet, so who cares if people die in the street because ONE company can't produce the vaccine fast enough. oh and yeah, how about this: everybody dies but the people in the company. who are they going to sell to?
ALL THIS PATENT STUFF is the outmost outbread of SICK CAPITALISM! oh and yeah speaking of survival of the fitest. the stupid dick manager is the only one to survive. so darwin is wrong afterall.
no wonder nothing happens anymore if every invention is shelft for 20 years. no wonder economy is going down and people get out of a job (and get sick in the mean time).
damn i wish i could FLAME these dickheads to hell!
-
if i where the boss of a company i would be the janitor at the same time and i would ride to work with a bicycle. FUCK ASSES!
I hope the research into SARS is going to lead to a cure to both SARS and the common cold.
Drug companies make a lot of money from diseases and have no interest in finding a cure because the treatments they create take forever and therefore they are more profitable.
the worls is not a nice place. Good god, what have we been trying to do the last 4 or 5 centuries? make it worse?
why did poor tesla die without a penny (notice does high-power" lines outside makeing the elec. company silly rich?
mostly if they get a patent, they lean back and do nothing else but exploit their patent for 20 years. and then they go bust.
your alive if you work or not. your alive if you improve or not. but you are way more alive if you do new stuff and DO work, i mean real work not work that just keeps the system at status quo. who would remember any boss managers, you know the silly rich ones, but how many remember TESLA, EINSTEIN, NEWTON, etc. ha! now does where millionaers, in a way. and i am sure if they weren't tormented in finally finding a solution to a problem they where very happy people because they UNDERSTAND!
AND: the guy who invented/discoverd eletricity didn't have a HUGE budget did he?
first they (marketers) give us a unhealty livestyle then the sell use the drug to solve the problem.
AUA AUA AUA, it just hurts. example: VIAGRA: the girls nowaday are soo lame (Gucci, all the bullshit make-up (that: by the way killed alot of lab-animals: bad carma for make-up forever), and so on.) now dress her in this and send her on a mountain, u know with high-heels or to the dessert or to the northpole. my expeditionary equipment, top-notch, is cheaper then a bitch clad in what-ever-its-expensive, parfuemed and maked-up. MY GOD!
Maybe there is a connection between luxury and un-happyness. like i can BUY HAPPYNESS or UNDERSTANDING. but it's futil to argue with these people. it's like trying to play cheese with someone who doesn't have hands.
oh! and why is a diamond more expensive then a cockroach? i personallt find the second WAY more beautiful. and it's a lie insects are dirty!
all this drug research is like cleaning up AFTER tschernoble. you are sick ALREADY. so lets keep the hongkok sevagesystem the way it is and sell tonns of vaccine, no bad idea, lets make it a pill/tablet so we can sell again if they get sick again.
must be cool to be rich in hongkok, when as soon as you get out of your porsch or mercedes or what ever and you just smell shit everywhere and not your top-notch-bitches super-expensive perfum. oh and by the way, perfum was invented in paris a few hundred years ago, BECAUSE it stank everywhere!!!
GO FUCK YOURSELF>
I'm claiming rights to the value of pi. That'll be 2 cents per digit.
A firm in Hong Kong is seeking the patent to the entire SARS virus.
The "typhoid mary" should have he right to patent SARS. While SARS is thought of as natrual what if it was a production via this persons body??
Maybe the first person to get SARS natrualy produce's it as a(symptom?) of there stage in life, like peoples odor. Are such things patentable?? (well odors, smell's and fragrances are not. As it has been said, Its a discovery treat it as one.)
Crackers`n`Soup
Does anyone else find it insane that a patent would even be *allowed* on a *naturally occurring* genetic sequence? (Let alone that a preemptive patent would have to be filed to prevent hoarding of a naturally-occuring information sequence? Isn't this sorta like hoarding a phone book??)
Isn't the idea of the patent to protect something you *invented*?? (What, now someone's going to claim to have invented the SARS virus? Oooh, the lawsuits one could make from that...)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Basically, research costs money. If a company is going to invest money in research to develop a new product, it requires profit incentive. Unless it were for patents, that profit incentive would be in doubt, because other companies can come along and potentially eat into the profit margin of the original company.
Patenting silly things like one-click shopping aside, the idea of giving a company exclusive rights to a particular technology for having developed that technology is a good one. It encourages the development of new products and technologies that enrich our lives. This is where the catch lies, however. Our lives are enriched by these new technologies, but do they really need to be? Are we all that much better off having, say, High Definition television, versus what its predecessor was? I don't deny the fact that there's a market for new technologies like that; people will pay money for it, and they will enjoy having access to those new "cool and shiny" toys. In fact, I'd probably pay money for that type of stuff too (once I'm out of graduate school). But do we really *need* it to survive as a human species? Is there a chance of me dying if I don't have access to the latest Sony plasma TV? No. Creating new technologies that improve the "leisure" sector, or even ones that improve "business efficiency", are not things that we need to survive as a human race.
However, when a pharmaceutical company patents a gene (or a drug), and limits people, or entire third world countries, from having access to certain treatments, there's more than just profit margins at stake here. There are human lives at stake. This is my first argument against the patenting that goes on by pharmaceuticals. There is something funadmentally flawed about the patenting process when it starts placing a dollar value on human life and health. Why is this bad? Lets put the morality and ethics arguments aside, because a lot of die-hard capitalists reading this probably have none to begin with. It's bad because poor health in your neighbour might mean poor health in you one day. SARS is the perfect example of this. Look at how easily it spreads. It's true that it only has about a 6% mortality rate, but its virulence illustrates what amount of death another equally virulent but more lethal virus can cause. If pharmaceuticals let a segment of the world's population health deteriorate because they don't have the money to buy its treatments, eventually conditions will develop in that part of the population that will be ripe for such a deadly virus or antibiotic-resistant bacteria to come into existence. Do you think such a bug is going to determine who it infects based on the dollar amount in the person's bank account? I doubt it. It's true that if such a scenario should occur, the pharmaceuticals would mobilize themselves to develop another super drug or vaccine to protect themselves (and those with enough $$$) from said disease. But the fact is, if they had had a little foresight, instead of being concerned with the profit margins of the next quarter, such a virus might have not even had the opportunity to develop in the first place. Essentially, the good health of your neighbour, even if he isn't as well off monetarily as you, also contributes to your own good health in the future.
The second argument against the patenting madness goes like this: The genome of a virus is a naturally occuring thing. Even though it costs money to research and decode the genome, the genome was not created by the pharmaceutical companies. It was there for anyone to find. Allowing a company to patent something they didn't even create is ridiculous. What are we going to allow to be patented next? Air? "I'm sorry, sir, you cannot breathe unless you pay HyperGlobalMegaPharmaNet a royalty fee of several million dollars. If you choose to breathe without compensating the company for said amount, we will see you in court. In the meantime, we will get a court order preventing you from breathing until such a time that the matter is resolved."
In Soviet Russia SARS patents you!
What if someone wanted to make a billion dollars?
The idea isn't too far fetched so far, people like to be rich, right?
What if you engineered a virus? Its non-trivial to do, but with the right equipment, you can do it for practically free.
What if you engineered a cure for the virus?
What if you patented it?
Now in order to make money, all you need to do is spread the virus around.
Hooray! Money is the #1 factor in who wins wars.
God spoke to me
Developing drugs is an extremely expensive business and as much as you'd like to believe in human goodness, medicine has never been done, is not done and will not be done in charity.
You mean marketing drugs is expensive. Pharmaceuticals spend two to three times as much on marketing as on research.
And as much as you'd like to believe that everyone is solely profit-driven, medicine has frequently been done, is being done, and will continue to be done in charity. Sorry, but isn't that easy to whitewash the concept of altruism from peoples' minds.
Though speaking of profit, the pharmaceutical industry remains one of the most profitable in the world. It was before the crash, and remains so after. You argue that drugs are expensive to develop, but how does that argument play into an industry reporting returns several times higher than the next most profitable industry?
You can talk about how expensive it is to make drugs all you want -- the fact is that the pharmaceuticals are meeting that cost and then some to the tune of an 18% profit. The argument that the drug companies need to make a profit is a red herring, because they are more than making a profit. The argument that drug prices can't be lowered or that cheap generics for 3rd world countries can't be made is a lie, because they are operating nowhere near break-even.
The brutal truth is: no profit, no research, no new drugs and much, much more dead people.
No. The brutal truth is that the pharmaceuticals are making too much profit, and the result of their greed is many, many more dead people.
The enemies of Democracy are
Even though it's a "discovery" and not an "invention"?
If they own the patent, and therefore the thing described in the patent, are they responsible for what that thing does?
Just because they did the research means nothing because they would not have been able to do it in the first place without government grants.
When the drug maker buys research that had been funded by government grants, the drug maker pays back the grants at least in part.
Will I retire or break 10K?
From the article: "The royalties, were there to be any at some later date, would come back to basically foster further research here." So... there are actually royalties? So... they patent it now and claim to do this without any interest in money, and tomorrow they want royalties? Or what?
..is that the Patent Office has to go back to requiring a working implementation of whatever discovery/invention that they choose to grant a patent on.
Then we could just give SARS to the Patent Office Examiners and be done with the whole damn thing.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
is wrong.
People will abuse them. This should not be allowed in any country. I don't care what the arguments are, people will use patents on lifeforms and such for evil purposes..
For great justice take off every sig.
Well, aparently it doesn't take too many amoral scientists to ruin things, for this "minority" has certainly managed to seed the world with a bouny of sinister weapons.
to have a patent on SARS? Collect a royalty every time someone is infected!
"We think it's a discovery not an invention, but we'll take the money anyway (and put it to excellent use)."
Yeah, like buying a condo in NYC, an island off Florida, or both!
Did Marra keep his name off the patent application because he'd rather not concede the fact that he will potentially pocket half of the royalties?
This patent is pointless as far as putting the information in the public domain. Its only reasonable, practical use is for profiteering. Face it: in the post-genomic era, the previously espoused principles of free and unencumbered access to genetic data are breaking down all around us. Considering so much of this information is *not* manmade, whereas virtually all software *is* manmade, it is surprising the open source movement doesn't see such patenting as a resounding battlecry.
Was the SARS patient's consent obtained for patenting their virus? I'll bet not.
Did the Chinese deliberately create a deadly virus and then attempt to financially benefit off of it by patenting the virus?
Are we still fighting with France over the rights to the AIDS virus?
I saw a show on HBO the other day about the discovery of it...felt like slapping the scientists. They were more concerned with patents and glory than the actual research and elimination.
Essentially, the story is either BS (and these people want to make money off the gene themselves) or the people don't understand the patent system.
A defensive patent is acquired so that you have IP to club other people with.
You *never* acquire a patent to ensure that something stays in the public domain. A patent is specifically a document ensuring that information is *not* publically usable. If you simply publically publish the information that these people are claiming they need to patent, it immediately becomes unpatentable by anyone.
May we never see th
I never realized the breadth and reach of the patent office's slimy tentacles. This gives me new hope that my patent application for the process "death" will be approved.
Hmmm, I wonder who owns the patent on "taxes"?
didn't the wall street journal publish an aricle about this particular patent application and a few others yesterday? I'm not hating, but this is supposed to be a technology forum; a day late, a byte short i'm afraid. better job next time.
I think, if they *can* patent the virus, they should be responsible for damages. After all, they own it. They didn't create it, however, they are benefiting from it. I dislike the win-win for the companies.
How quickly would this biological patent stuff stop if people started suing the owner of the breast cancer gene, anything like that.
mod this parent up
You cannot patent a virus. But you can patent a fundamental method regarding that virus. For example the only method to identify it, based on its gene sequence you found. Now try to develop a vaccine without violating that patent.
no one's ever suggested that to me. the 90s did not do this to me : it was history 30 class, and the teaching of dialectic. actually i do often imagine that it does not get much better than this. having really no freinds[and few foes] i can say, act, think, and look like anything i want[so long as i'm not at work...] ... i don't have to be on call 24/7 tending to a child or have to deal with a pregnant girlfreind...i'm no longer starving[in fact, now i'm having to worry about getting fat! imagine!]...i have water, heat, computers, and MONEY in the form of credit and whatever i'm paid... i know every benificial thing i recieve i'm screwing some other poor bastard...but the question is at least there now...that while i can give said benificial thing up...
there is no guarantee that this will accomplish anything more of screwing myself. mabye this doesn't make any sense, perhaps so. if that's the case then just think : thanx for the idea.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.