Slashdot Mirror
Patents and Open Source Biotech
sebFlyte writes "Since Slashdot readers seem to be interesting in the issues and problems surrounding software patents, I thought they might be interested to see that Wired is running an interesting piece on patents in Biotech and the way that they can hold up important research, and how there are clear parallels with the open source software community with the way that advocates of openness are trying to solve these problems."
Takes you to the second page of the article. For those who like to skip to the end I guess. first page
Is copyright killing culture? Some documentary filmmakers certainly think so.
That's not true, every prescription drug is a chemical and they can certainly be patented. Where did you get the idea that chemicals can't be patented? Even different combinations of chemicals can be patented, take for instance sodas. All fairly simple ingredients, but clearly a patentable product.
Dude, my grandfather is a chemical engineer and has 60+ patents. Whiteners, that ink-impregnated paper that replaced carbon paper, etc.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Universities provide a necessary infusion of discoveries and methodologies into biotech, but that's about as far as I can agree with you.
Couple of random comments:
Don't put scientists on pedestals. Scientists, collectively, are not motivated by sheer intellectual curiosity or altruism. Any number of them are conniving bastards willing to stick it to the Ph.D. next door so long as their pub gets out first or their grant gets funded. In the upper echelons of university research, the bastard to altruist ratio gets pretty high. In general, they're just human beings, no better or worse than the guy working the counter at your local convenience store.
Biotech data is expensive: Properly designed, decently powered studies often exceed the pocketbook of government funding agencies. As such, many of the academic research papers in biotech involve rehashes and re-analyses of the same data sets over and over. This is not by choice; it's simply a consequence of their being unable to do more. Industry is a major player in biotech, and has been for a very long time (can anyone say Taq polymerase?).
There are patents for gene sequences, for chrissakes
No, there aren't. Genetic patents cover the gene PLUS some use of the gene.
ssentially is a ban on evolution.
You have no clue.
The bulk of serious research is done in an open environment.
Do you realize what a patent requires you to do? You have to publish your results in order to be granted a patent. Anyone can download your patent and us the results for further reasearch. Without the patent the researcher would have NO incentive to patent.
To the best of my knowledge, the only person known to have successfully learned something from patents was Einstein
Your knowledge of patents is pathetic.
It isn't going to happen.
The first U.S. plant patents were granted in 1930, sixteen patents were awarded posthumously to Luther Burbank, 1849-1926, the 10,000th plant patent was granted in 1997. Today in Science History
Burpee was commercially developing hybrid plant and animal stocks as early as 1876, only ten years after Mendel gave selective breeding a scientific basis.