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Outstanding Achievements In Biopiracy - 2004

Posted by timothy on from the they-stole-our-parts dept.

mr_don't writes "The Coalition Against Biopiracy is hosting yet another 'Captain Hook Awards,' for 'Outstanding Achievements in Biopiracy.' So far, only a few nominees have been submitted, but a key one is for Melbourne-based Genetic Technologies for 'having patented the non-coded DNA of all living creatures, including humans.' The web site is calling for 'help to identify the Greediest, Most Offensive and Dangerous biopirates from across the globe' -- I am sure Slashdot readers certainly know of a few."

3 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Is this illegal and if not, why not? by Andy+Smith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Patents such as the example given at the top of the page should be illegal. They are without merit and are effectively premeditated malice as the company intends to play "law suit roulette" by suing as many companies as they can with the hope of winning more cases that they lose. Such patents are unhelpful to the human race as a whole and are damaging to the ethical companies who get caught up in the malicious law suits. Doesn't that sound to you like it should be a crime?

    1. Re:Is this illegal and if not, why not? by gooru · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What I would love to see is a patent governing the act of getting bad patents and suing the pants off of everyone as a business method patent. This would certainly show the ridiculousness of the current state of patent law. And if the courts uphold it, I'm moving out of here.

    2. Re:Is this illegal and if not, why not? by WTFmonkey · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I think the only semi-realistic and short-term way out of this is to fire the whole lot of examiners, hire lots of new smart people to do it, and pay them lots of money to do it well.

      The way this stuff's going, I'd be willing to pay a few extra bucks in taxes to hire some smart, big-brained muthas with field experience (I think that's especially important) who are going to say "no" when they should and say "yes" when they should. Put the chimps who are doing it now out on their asses.