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
Exclude living systems and their components (e.g., genes) from the patent system. Period. End of story.
... GMAFB. Innovation in biotech (and in pretty much every technical field) is done by scientists, not moneymen. And the scientists will continue to do their jobs, whether for prestige or a desire to aid their fellow man or just out of sheer intellectual curiosity. Most of them will do it, BTW, in university labs, not corporate "R&D" shops, just the way they always have.
For those who whine, "But then there won't be any incentive to innovate!"
If the suits want to make a profit, they'll have to work a little harder to figure out how. Watch me weep in sympathy.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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
Is copyright killing culture? Some documentary filmmakers certainly think so.
Interestingly, you can download sizable chunks of the gene sequences for cows, chickens, humans, the SARS virus... Clearly, the researchers who have made such information available are Communists, for not protecting their IP rights and demanding the first-born from all who would see such information.
Pathetic. The bulk of serious research is done in an open environment. If you want to see quality, verifiable, useful information, you don't look in the patent office. You look up the research papers that have been published and are either freely available or damn cheap.
To the best of my knowledge, the only person known to have successfully learned something from patents was Einstein. But if you look at his best work, you look at the thought experiments, the observations of the ordinary, the stuff that is simply not ownable. THAT is where Real Science and Real R&D takes place.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
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.)