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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."
Viva la revelotion , capitalist running-dog pharmacorps!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Beautiful post, man. If people don't have the natural desire to understand themselves enough to innovate in this field, to hell with 'em.. If someone discovers a way to cure me, or augment me, or terrorize the living hell out of me I don't want that technique monopolized. Call me communist, call me anarchist, call me when Microsoft wants you to install ActiveX to cure your ailments.
An acid is a chemical.
Chemicals cannot be patented.
What's going on here?
What am I missing?
1 problem.
Is a Virus living?
What about bacteria?
What about the single protein that causes CJD?
What about a pint of beer, or some new way of making a plastic that uses designer bacteria in the process.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
the scientists do not work independently of the moneymen.
This goes double for industry. You invent something, the company patents it. You might be the inventor, but the company is the assignee. It is their patent to do with what they please. I have patents in a mixture of software and biology. Where I work, and I assume it is pretty much the same in most places, if the company wants to patent it, you have no choice. I am not against patents, but if you work for a corporation and they want to patent your invention, you will have little choice other than refusing, then quiting. And even that might not be enough.
Here's an article quite:
BIOS will soon launch an open-source platform that promises to free up rights to patented DNA sequences and the methods needed to manipulate biological material.
I thought you can't patent DNA sequences, only processes on sequences. Gene patents without specific purposes were thrown out years ago, weren't they?
I understand why methods are being patented. They are costly to develop. They aren't obvious. Without patents, I'm not sure what the desire is to invent a new method to cheaply assay something.
My work uses data very similar to sequence data (genotype data), and the data gathering process has become a commodity over the last few years. Everyone's developed their own machines, methodologies, and patents. You can sign up with any of these guys, and essentially the bottom line is: cents / data point. You weight that in against the size of the batches you're planning on doing over the next number of years, the reliability and service provided by the company's platform, and go.
These companies would not be innovating newer, cheaper solutions if I could just take those solutions back to the lab and they didn't earn a penny for their effort. As it is, these companies are working on slim margins, and not many of the startups are successful.
In the past, before these companies came out with their turnkey solutions, we'd have to roll our own. And that means detection systems, possibly robots, databases, protocols for chemical processes, etc.
When I worked in the lab, we did one of these, based on a paper that was published in 1999. Even standing on the back of another researcher, it took us 18 months to have a working assay system that was 'production ready' for JUST OUR LAB (granted, it's the MIT genome center, and we're a big-ass lab.) Just about the time we finished, the first decent turn key solution came out...and it was cheaper and easier than what we'd developed.
I love what I do for a living. It's a good time, and interesting work. Would I do it for free, if I had to work a normal job?
No way. This job alone takes huge amounts of time, outside research, etc to excel. If I wasn't compensated for my hard work, I'd have no time to *do* that hard work.
(given all that, we're working on open-sourcing chunks of our source code, to at least give something back to the community - but source code is the least of our assets.)
I'm not even going to bother to try and be persuasive here. Let me just lay it on the line:
Dickcheeses, pharma companies are the ones who develop new drugs. Not university or government researchers. The industry as a whole spent well over $30 billion last year on R&D developing new drugs. That's more than the TOTAL NIH budget. If researchers discover a new molecule that looks promising as a treatment for a disease they PATENT it. Even if they don't work for a company. Why? Because they want a company to license it and make a drug out of it.
If there are no patents on the molecule NO company will touch it. That means NO drug. That means NO new cures for diseases.
It is outrageously expensive to develop a drug (estimates run from 800 million to 1.7 billion per drug.) Where is the money going to come from if there are no patents around to protect a company so it can make some money on the drug? Huh?
Patents only last 20 years. It takes 2 years to get a molecule/protein patented. It takes about ten years to develop and test a drug based on that molecule or protein. That means the company has to make all its >$1 billion back in about eight years before the patent expires and the generics take over.
This is a simple fact - if a new potential drug is not patented it will never be developed and no new CURE. Think about it, you open-source silly-people. What may work in developing software does not work in developing drugs.
The parent company of the company I work for has recently developed a noninvasive screening test for colon cancer. Basically, you poop in a bucket and the poop is analyzed for fragments of RNA that are associated with cancerous cells. The company spent approximately a bazillion dollars developing this test.
So how do you let them protect their investment? The detection processes are already patented (we license them, at a cost of another bazillion dollars a year.) They can't patent the poop itself-- everyone's is different. So they patented the structure of the detectable fragments. Did they invent the fragment itself? Of course not, the cancer cells did. But they made these particular fragments incredibly valuable, in one particular context.
Do these patents prevent someone else from discovering another, equally detectable fragment? No. All it does is protect the company's investment in R&D, while still allowing them to provide a reasonable profit while providing a valuable service.
If it weren't possible to patent such things, this research would never have been done. And believe me, if you've ever had a colonoscopy, you'd be damned pleased that an alternate technology exists.