Three University of Wisconsin Stem Cell Patents Rejected

eldavojohn writes "A non-profit alumni group from the University of Wisconsin (WARF) has suffered a preliminary ruling against three of their recent patents regarding stem cells. Given that these patents have been upheld in prior rulings, there is a lot of speculation that they will be upheld in a future court case. From the PhysOrg article: 'The patents, which cover virtually all stem cell research in the country, have brought in at least $3.2 million and could net much more money before they expire in 2015, the newspaper said. Companies wanting to study the cells must buy licenses costing $75,000 to $400,000. The newspaper said WARF recently started waiving the fees if the research is conducted at universities or by non-profit groups.' Should universities (or groups within universities) be allowed to hold patents and intellectual property while at the same time gaining donations and grants as an educational institution — or for that matter government funds?"

Comments

Why not?

[E IS mC(Square)]

"Should universities (or groups within universities) be allowed to hold patents and intellectual property while at the same time gaining donations and grants as an educational institution -- or for that matter government funds?"

Why not? I would prefer a university to hold a pattern any day than any corporate - at least, they are letting other NPOs and universities use it without charging.

In fact, give them more funding to do more research. Let them grab patterns before corporates get there first.

Re:Why not?

[john82]

GP: I would prefer a university to hold a pattern any day than any corporate

P: You are operating under the assumption that a university will act differently (better) than the average corporation.

Both of you hold the assumption that a university is not a corporation. Whether or not it has such a status in the legal sense is immaterial. In every other respect, universities are corporations. There are for-profit and not-for-profit examples. Some are good "corporate" citizens, and others are not. They produce product(s) and attempt to generate value for their stakeholders. But to think of universities (as a class) to be a less corruptible entity than corporations is delusional.

Corporations vs universities strikes me as a "distinction without a difference".

Reasons

[Stooshie]

The reasons given were that the patents were:

... obvious to one of ordinary skill ...

It seems to me that some business model patents and computer patents that were accepted should have been rejected for the same reasons.

Gov't Funded Research Should Be Non-Patentable

[Skjellifetti]

I'm not too interested in the ethics or legality of obtaining patents from research funded by grants from non-governmental funding sources. That should be a contract item between the granter and grantee. But research results funded by government sources should be open and non-patentable. I've paid for the research once through my taxes. I should not have to pay for it again. Software developed using government funds should be open sourced using a BSD style license so that anyone can include it in either closed source or open source apps.

Re:Gov't Funded Research Should Be Non-Patentable

[Cheapy]

These patents bring money in to the university so they can continue to do research. This supports the research, and lets more research get done. The government doesn't give nearly enough money for all this research to happen without the help of money from patents.

Re:Research Exemption?

[rhombic]

IANAL, but doesn't the Patent Research Exemption specifically mean that research does *not* require a license. Even companies can work on research and clinical trials and they don't need a licence as long as they don't begin commercial manufacture of the product within the patent term?

There is no such thing as non-profit research at a university today, at least not in the life sciences. The reasons that non-profits are licensing these things is because THEY want to patent their inventions, and sell them to industry. If they don't have a license for the original research they did, they won't be able to sell it in turn. When the federal government started to encourage universities to patent the results of research off of NIH and NSF grants, and charge licensing fees, the whole idea of non-profit basic research died a sad death. Uni's are just for-profit research entities today, teaching is nearly irrelevant (most faculty consider it a burden & waste of their time), the junior faculty don't get paid much, & the post-docs and grad students are essentially slave labor, but the Profs that bring in big grants & patents are paid as much if not more than an industry.