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

Research Exemption?

[jakosc]

It's not clear to me that they ever had a case for charging Universities or Non-profit groups, so it's odd that they mention that they have "started waiving the fees"

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?

Re:Research Exemption?

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I have a lot of the same concerns. And frankly since I paid for the research through my taxes I think I should own it through the agency of my government. The research results should belong to either the appropriate level of government or the university that employs the researcher, or some mix of the two. The exact mix could depend on where the money for constructing and maintaining the university, providing grants etc. came from. Hopefully those entities make the results available to others at no charge.

The argument that is frequently made is that the best and brightest will go to industry if they don't get something extra. Fine, pay them industry level wages. Why not? The added perks of tenure, relative freedom etc. should be more than enough to tip the balance towards the academic life. But the results of that work should belong to all of us. Whether or not the results should be freely available to industry is debatable and I can see good arguments for either side of that debate.

It should also be remembered that different places have different ways of supporting university research. Some make it very competitive, with universities requiring researchers to pay for the facilities they use and government grants only going to the cream of the crop. Others tend to provide basic infrastructure as part of being hired while government research funding is spread around as much as possible so that most researchers get some funding for their work.

Should universities...be allowed to hold patents

[l3v1]

Should universities (or groups within universities) be allowed to hold patents

Well, if anyone should, then better the universities than companies. Apart from that, I would _not_ ever allow _anyone_ to hold _any_ patent in _any_ way related to human health and cure. Yes, I know what that would mean to "health" and drug companies.
 

Re:Should universities...be allowed to hold patent

[OakLEE]

Would you - honestly - trust a pharmaceutical corporation to support research for a cheap and effective cure to ANY of the billion-dollar-revenue generating illnesses out there? This isn't conspiracy-theory 'They're sitting on an AIDS vaccine!' shit either, this is a simple and likely 'Why fund that? It'd just hurt our bottom line.' Yes, I would trust the pharmaceutical company. The first pharmco to cure cancer or AIDS is going to make hundreds of billions of dollars off the cure, and severely hurt their competitor's bottom line.

If anything completely government funded research would be worse, because the researchers have no incentive to complete their work. What's going to happen when these researchers find a cure? Their funding is going to be cut and they'll be out of work. If anything, they have incentive to string the government along because, unlike a pharmco Congress would not dare cut their funding. No Congressman wants to have to explain to his constituents how he is hindering their only hope of a cure by reducing funding.

The other benefit to pharmcos is competition. As I alluded to, if there is only one entity researching a cure, its only going to take one approach at a time to finding it. Contrast this with having several companies doing research. Each company is going to develop its own road map and take varied avenues to the research, effectively speeding up research as a whole. It's like the idea behind distributed computing. Why have one processor repeat same task 10 times when you can have 10 processors do each task once?