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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?"
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?
"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.
The reasons given were that the patents were:
It seems to me that some business model patents and computer patents that were accepted should have been rejected for the same reasons.
America, Home of the Brave.
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.
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WARF is independent legally from U. Wisconsin, and it has held patents for at least 60 years. Warfarin (Coumadin) was originally patented by Warf long ago. A lot of vitamin technology (producing them, etc.) was also. They are basically the research trust fund of the University. That is, they get a piece of the patents from researchers at Un. of Wisconsin and then distribute the money as grants to UW researchers. I think virtually all big Universities have similar structures.
Whether these patents were good is another thing, I'm kind of hoping they go on obviousness or previous technology, because if they go the only software patent that would even match them might have been RSA. If I had any trust in the patent system to be consistent I would be for this rejection (speaking as a Wisc graduate) and as a principle I guess I still am.
If non-profits (particularly universities) hold patents that are funded by donantions and grants they can, in theory, reduce their need for these sources of funds. The Bayh-Dole Act provided an avenue for this and actually encourages universities to license their technologies.
I am currently a research assitant for the Technology Commercialization Lab (a group that works closely with the Office of Technology Commercialization which governs patent rights for research conducted at the university) at my university and this is part of what we are supposed to do. We try to help professors in either starting a new company based on their research in order to develop a commercial product or to license it to a third party. The university gets 33% of the proceeds, the department gets 33%, and the professor gets 33% of any licensing fees paid to the university. In a research orinted university these proceeds have the ability to add up to a lot of cash to help fund further research, new facilities, and pay salaries. At my university we haven't produced many "killer techs" that have turned into large sums of money, but it can happen. Stanford and MIT (along with others) have both recieved significant sums of money from licensing patents.
If the government isn't going to pay 100% of the cost of the research, yes. My last research project was funded at 80% of cost. Where do they expect the other 20% to come from if we can't profit from our research?
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.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Several years ago, a particular big 3 company *accidently* donated a patent regarding a certain coating to a university.
That university then, 1 year later, turned around and sued the company that had donated the patent for violating it. I'm not kidding. To the order of $300,000 a month. I happen to be involved in the change getting rid of the old coating and moving to the new - just to get away from the litigation.
Don't fool yourself. Universities are not about being institutions of higher learning. They are businesses, out to advertise and make money just like any other business. Their sports programs, their research programs, even the ranking in the grad and undergrad programs is ALL about attracting talent so they can attract more money.
As far as alternatives to the current patent regime, the only other solutions are either government directed research or large government prize rewards. Both of these have drawbacks that far outweigh the benefit of their implementation.
The problem with direct 100% government funding is that it creates an incentive to never actually finish work. Researchers would be loathed to find a cure if that cure meant that they were no longer needed and their funding would be cut off. As an illustration, look at the War on Drugs. Do you think the DEA and FBI would actually benefit if all illegal drugs were to suddenly stop entering the US? No, they would have their funding either capped or cut.
Direct prizes are problematic b/c they are inherently hard to value. At a proper prize would have to cover the cost of research plus a "healthy" profit to get companies to compete for it. The hard part here comes in determining the valuation. If the prize amount is set too low, no one will do research. If it is set too high, you effectively have society overpaying for the drug, the excess being the prize amount minus the minimum amount the winning company would have accepted. All of this guessing is eliminated in a patent regime, as the market will determine the amount spent on research, while the patent will effectively serve as "the carrot" for which the drug company will be awarded.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
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?
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...