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Music From DNA Patented
stm2 writes "Two lawyers have patented generating music from a DNA sequence. According to the patent, it covers 'music generated by decoding and transcribing genetic information within a DNA sequence into a music signal having melody and harmony.' A comment to the blog post mentions DNA-derived music being performed at a conference in 1995."
This is the kind of invention that would be worth protecting if it protected only the specific device the inventors produced to do it.
But as it happens, the patent as granted would protect them from competing with me, and anyone else whose DNA codes their bodies functionality to play a musical instrument with melody and harmony.
It's a joke, it ruins "science and the useful arts" in the name of "promoting" it, and it ruins the actual narrower right of authors/inventors to be protected for a reasonably limited time from competition stealing their investment just in time to compete with them.
But no one is talking about replacing it with something Constitutional. That would be a great invention, based on the original prior art, that should be as widely copied as possible.
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make install -not war
How would this be any different from generating music from the atomic structure of crystals, or from the x-rays being given off by a pulsar? How the fuck can you patent this? What is there to fucking patent? Christ, I wish they'd simply fine guys like this several million times their net worth or make them sign a document promising never to even go within five miles of the patent office or even think about sending in letters.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A good century ago or so, at the dawn of radioastronomy, there was a whole big point of "celestial music". People thought that the radio signals emitted by stars have a certain harmony, and when used right, can produce "heavenly" melody.
Needless to say that didn't go very far.
Same story here. Just because you find something which, when transformed, can generate certain audio patterns, doesn't mean it will be any good as *music*. In fact, looking for some "objective", "universal" melody source is pretty much dumb as music preference varies greatly even within our own species (*waits for rock vs rap flaming to start*), and many other species have different combinations of sound they perceive as music (and which we perceive only as noise).
Music is *produced* with a specific purpose in mind, and the production rules vary depending on that purpose. You won't find it bestowed upon you, whether from the stars or magically encoded in some DNA sequence.
It just makes no sense.
Translating DNA into music is a really neat concept. Translating anything that has a decipherable system to its design into another design system is rad. But why, why, why, patent it? Is it so someone else does not come along and claim credit for your innovation? I doubt it. Prior art would invalidate any later patent claims.
It just makes no sense. Please bear in mind that I write proprietary software for a living. I would never imagine attempting to prevent a competitor from providing their customers with the best product that they can produce, whether or not it resembled my product. I compete based on the quality of my product and service.
And this translation of DNA into music is not even a salable product... I agree with parent poster. This is yet another bewildering use of the patent system.
Regards.
"Method for remembering a musical sequence through notation involving a series of lines and spaces."
I'd say he's in the clear. The patent office, on the other hand, needs a good kick.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I wrote a program quite a while back which converted text files (say, The Gettysburg Address) into standard MIDI files, and for the result to be anything even remotely playable I needed to do quite a bit of normalization as part of the translation.
So if anyone uses this for greeting cards, it's going to be 1% DNA source material and 99% pre-conceived structure. I'm sure they'll market it as "this is the music that is coursing through your veins!" when in reality it's just a really expensive random-number generator. And I'd be very interested to see what happens if you send the same DNA sample in twice, say a few months apart, and compare the results (which should be identical, right?)...
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
...that they cornered the market on transcribing DNA sequences into music notation in general, or by their parameters? If they are talking in general, they have no leg to stand on- there's too much prior art, fictional and practical. If they have a specific algorithm that makes a particular 'sound', it's still pretty craptacular.
Mod parent up
American patents are ridiculous. You can go as far as patenting a live being. I'll eventually find myself patented in America and sued over the usage of me. onlyinamerica.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
"Every government is corrupt..."
When presented with evidence of government corruption, many Americans give excuses.