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U.S. Denies Patent on Part-Human Hybrid
jimkski wrote to mention a Boston Globe story involving the refusal of a patent claim on a genetically engineered creature. From the article: "A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in U.S. intellectual property law."
Even better, he bascially applied for it, hoping to set a precendent to stop others patenting living creatures.
Nice to see - my faith in the Patent system has raised slightly from 'completely hopeless' to 'mostly hopeless'
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
the probability of virus/pathogen crossing the species barrier is increased enormously by makeing these things. It is madness and should be internationally outlawed.
From the article they had their reasons, purely legal and not personal/ethical,
From the article;
One rationale in the documents sent to Newman is that such a patent would be "inconsistent with the constitutional right to privacy." After all, the office wrote, a patent allows the owner to exclude others from making the claimed invention. If a patent were to be issued on a human, it would conflict with one of the core privacy rights in the Constitution-- a person's right to decide whether and when to procreate.
Patents on humans also could conflict with the 13th Amendment's prohibition against slavery. That is because a patent permits the owner to exclude others from "using" the invention. Because "use" can mean "employ," officials wrote, a patent holder could prevent a person from being employed by any other -- which "would be tantamount to involuntary servitude."
Finally, the office noted it is illegal to import products that are made abroad using processes patented in the United States. To show how that could cause a problem in a world in which people are patentable, it gave an example in which a man goes overseas and undergoes one of the many surgical procedures patented by US doctors. Simply by returning to America, the office said, that "surgically altered human" could be guilty of patent infringement for illegally importing himself.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Aside from the fact that this would-be patent dealt with chimeric technologies, this case was a particularly interesting one because the filer, Stuart Newman, sought the patent to block others from creating the technology. By denying him the patent on said terms (that it is too close to a human), he won -- sort of. This means that other companies cannot patent such processes if they "discover" them, but at the same time he cannot block the creation of "chimaera", which was his original purpose.
At the time he filed the patent, the head of the USPTO held a press conference and stated that he would be denying the patent on ethical terms, ground on which the USPTO is not supposed to tread. In actuality, I've heard that he was under pressure from industry, specifically two companies in the business of chimeric technologies (I can't remember their names, but one is located in MA, I believe). In any case, the fact that he was denied a patent is good -- other people/companies cannot patent similar creations. On the other hand, his loss is bad -- other people/companies can feel free to create chimaeras.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Go figure that the first truely patentable concept to come up, in the news, in a long time has been deined by the US patent office. Mind you a general patent on the idea of creating geneticaly cross breed creatures may be a bit broad for a patent, but hopefully this does not stop specific creations from being pantented.
Patents should be about things that can actually be done at the time they are patented. So the first person who creates Dog-Man should be able to patent Dog-Man.
On the other hand, if this means the patent office is actually reviewing patents, and rejecting overly broad patents based on concepts mostly fictitious I'm all for it.
You do not collect patent related royalties for the activities of things you have created. You collect royalties from a patent if someone else violates your patent by creating that thing you have patented (or using that process. etc).
Now we could go on to talk about license agreements and the buyer of such products. Assuming the patentee is smart and makes sure any purchaser of his product (the ultimate goal of any patent) agrees to an EULA that states the purchaser is unable to use the creation for monitary gain without paying significant royalties, then you could certainly see the patent holder collecting royalties for thier creations actions. Other wise it would probably be like the purchase of a work truck, what you do with it is up to you and you can make monetary gain from it.
Honestly I'm not going to debate the moralities issues, becasue once man starts creating sentient life morality has to change, being as most (I did not say all) morality is based on regious belief and religion is mostly based around some form of creator god(s), which would be usurped by the fact that humans would now be the creators, and no one one question what a god does with it's creations. Therefor a scientificaly created creature is really know different that any other creation except that it is biological.
GP's comment had nothing to do with plant patents. GP was cleverly commenting on the fact that a human is an animal, so something that is part human, part animal is entirely animal. Similarly, a tree is a plant, so something that is part tree and part plant is entirely plant.
Although if my memory of Peterson's Field Guide to Eastern Forests is correct, a tree is any woody plant that's main stalk is 3" in diameter at chest hight. So while we can distinguish a human as a distinct species of animal, the tree-plant bit is a bit mushy (i.e., a six inch tall oak plant would be a bush, not a tree).
According to well established history, the first application of this will be the porn industry. So it seems to me that the line between human-human sex and human-animal sex is likely to become quite blurred very soon.
This isn't necessarily a troll. It's a bit racist, but AC has a valid opinion, even if it is just that. Please, reinforce your point with some more substantial facts than a link to propaganda sites.
I don't know how to ask this without sounding condescending, so here goes without any tact:
From the article: In 1987, the patent office announced it would draw the line at humans, but it offered no legal rationale or statutory backing.
So you see, this position is 18 years old. Also, it is basic knowledge of the patent system (but also implied by the article) that the USPTO doesn't possess ultimate authority to interpret law - that is the role of the judicial system.
Alternatively, this "activist" didn't even bother to pursue the appeal process, thereby keeping his application OUT of the court system, thereby preventing his "activism" from generating new case law, thereby stopping his heroism short of actually achieving anything but publicity. The USPTO rejected his application based on a stance it took in 1987 - there was no legal basis for the USPTO's stance in 1987 and because this "activist" failed to appeal, there is STILL no legal basis for the USPTO's stance. There is -literally- nothing new in this story. Well, nothing newer than 18 years ago.
So, I don't want to sound condescending, but there it is. You say, "This cannot be lauded as a 'step in the right direction' for the USPO" [sic], but I can't see how this story has anything newsworthy in it at all. If anything, this is a 'step in the right direction' for the public, for they might become slightly more aware how the Courts are actually in charge of what is or is not patentable, not the USPTO.
Here's to hoping. Keyword from the article: Chakrabarty.
no I think the implication is that the pressure from the whacko-religious near-terrorist christian extremists would become to much to bear if the governament started patenting human-animal chimeras. It would errode the sacredicity of humanity by forcing them to move from their present all-or-nothing view humans, i.e. that thing god created first to an actual definition that would stand muster in a secular legal scope.
They'd sure flip if they got wind of an idea from one guy I heard of. He wants to genetically engineer half-human/half-simian sex slaves and market them under the trade names of Bimbonobo and Chimpanion. The day that happens watch the shit really hit the fan.
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I expect the Religious Right will end up getting steam-rolled over the genetic engineering issue when the average inhabitant of Beijing is 7.5 feet tall, weighs 220 lb. all muscle and has an average IQ of 220. Either that, or Darwin will simply dispatch with them. The mental image of a zoo in Beijing with a specimen of a bible-thumping fundamentalist in a cage labeled "Moral-American Crotch-Monkey" and getting gawked at by a crowd of our hypothetical brilliant, 7.5 foot Beijingers (sp?) is just too funny for words.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
I asked a rabbi about that once. I was working for a catering company in Cleveland that does a lot of Jewish events (weddings, bar mitzvahs, and so on), and the catering company worked with a rabbi who oversaw things to make sure we followed the food laws. So I thought he'd be well qualified to tell me whether a pig-based animal, genetically modified to comply with the Levitical food laws, could be kosher.
I didn't get an answer, though. I couldn't get him to take the question seriously - he seemed to think that no one would go to the trouble of genetically engineering pigs, just to let Jews eat real bacon - which seems oddly naive, given the lengths people have gone to to get around the commandment against working on the Sabbath.
There are lots of questions like this, where advances in science have possibilities that aren't clearly covered under millenia-old religious laws - like how a Muslim on the moon (or worse, a rotating space station) would figure out which way to face to pray.
Patents are denied all the time. What often happens is that the applicants re-apply several times. Part of it is that there was a Congressionally mandated review time (I think three or six months from application) where it must be accepted or denied before the deadline. When the backlog gets to be too much, they just deny a bunch of them. Then those denied re-apply. I think the USPTO gets a part of the application fees too, so more money for them for each re-application.
This is from a former prof of mine that holds a few patents.
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