U.S. Gets Taste of Own Patent Medicine

cheesedog writes "A few Andean countries have turned the tables on U.S. requests for more forceful expansion of patent law, requesting broader protection for indigenous plants and tribal uses of natural medicines. At first glance this seems like a win for these countries, but it is also a major braodening of the definition of what kinds of ideas can be locked away from the public in government-granted monopolies. As Right to Create notes: 'Let us hope that those involved in these negotiations, particularly those representing us in the U.S., see this for what it is: a de facto demonstration of how ridiculous our intellectual monopoly regime has become, and how insane our demands on the rest of the world's citizens are.'"

Comments

It's all about health, right?

[kimvette]

Pharmaceutical companies only care about your health. Natural remedies are eeeevil and bad for you. Patented synthetic drugs made from extracts of those natural remedies are good. That which cannot be patented is bad! Don't you love the anti-herbal campaigns run by pharmaceutical companies, and now that there are medical studies which prove that at least some ages-old remedies actually work, they are now racing to patent them?

Of course, if they can succeed in patenting things such as garlic, orange juice, cranberry juice, ecchinacea, and other foods which can cure some sicknesses that patented remedies can only control the symptoms of, and if they can patent herbs like St. John's Wort, Black cohosh, etc. then you will see pharmaceutical companies singing the praises of such things like revolutionary new cures for the cold, treatment of certain depressions for which prozac etc. are overkill, and black cohosh rather than conjugated horse urine for treatment of menopausal symptoms, all without negative side effects when taken in moderate amounts. You'll see herbal remedies and certain foods rise in prices and only be legally distributed by a certified/licenses pharmacist.

Or perhaps I am just cynical. I'm sure they really do have the public good in mind, right? Right? I mean, certainly drugs which treat depression "but can cause heart failure certain individuals" or "can result in liver failure in certain individuals" and drugs which can control blood pressure "but side effects include glaucoma" is a good thing because they are patentable and real treatments of the cause of problems rather than controlling symptoms is bad for business.

I'm all for patents for protecting legitimate inventions, but companies have gone too far with patents, and with the USPTO simply rubber-stamping every application to come through the door and leaving it up to the courts to sort out the mess, who wants to do business here in the US any more?

What's up with patenting software? That is what copyright is for. You're fully protected, and you can trademark certain aspects of the look and feel of an app. Patents are not required. Besides, since the 1950s there has been plenty of prior art which should rule most software patents invalid anyhow. Heck, hypertext in its purest form has been around since analog computers, and prior to that in paper books.

What's up with patenting the human genome? They innovated NOTHING. The human genome is either the product of billions of years of pure chance and accident, or the result of a design by "GOD" and there is nothing genetics companies are designing in the process, aside from designing the process and devices to actually map and manipulate the genome. Those processes and devices are certainly patentable, but the genome ought not to be as there is billions (or thousands, let's not get into that flame war, I'm including both theories here to avoid flamefests) of years' worth of prior art demonstrating that those companies have produced zilch.

Am I veering off topic here? Not really, I'm just drawing some related (and unrelated) examples of how ridiculous the patent process has become, due in part to the employeee productivity quotas set at the USPTO, and due in part to laziness.

A few years ago it was more difficult to obtain patent protection. A friend of mine invented a product related to automobiles and the USPTO rejected it because the clerk who received the application did not believe the invention would perform as claimed (since when is that the acid test for a patent?). The USPTO demanded that he produce other designs to prove that certain other things would not peform the intended function. He did so, persisted, and nearly $30K worth of prototypes later (not a lot of money for a large corp, but for a small self-funded proprietor it's a huge chunk of change) and independent testing labs proved his claim, they finally granted the patent. The clerk was certainly on his toes, but was a little too aggressive in enforcing the patent process, beca