Doctors Fight Patent On Medical Knowledge

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Doctor's groups, including the AMA and too many others to list, are supporting the Mayo Clinic in the case Prometheus v. Mayo. The Mayo Clinic alleges that the patents in question merely recite a natural phenomenon: the simple fact that the level of metabolites of a drug in a person's body can tell you how a patient is responding to that drug. The particular metabolites in this case are those of thiopurine drugs and the tests are covered by Prometheus Lab's 6,355,623 and 6,680,302 patents. But these aren't the only 'observational' patents in medicine — they're part of a trend where patents are sought to cover any test using the fact that gene XYZ is an indicator for some disease, or that certain chemicals in a blood sample indicate something about a patient's condition. There are even allegations that certain labs have gone so far as to send blood samples to a university lab, order testing for patented indicators, then sue that university for infringement. Naturally, Prometheus Labs sees this whole story differently, arguing that the Mayo Clinic will profit from treating patients with knowledge patented by them. They have their own supporters, too, such as the American Intellectual Property Law Association." Prometheus doesn't seem to be a classic patent troll; they actually perform the tests for which they have obtained patents.

Comments

Re:O to CO2 conversion

[Red Flayer]

You've got it backwards. Patents exist *precisely* to protect inventions that can be easily reverse-engineered.

If an invention cannot easily be reverse-engineered, then it does not need the protection of a patent. QED.

"Novel and non-obvious" does not mean "difficult to reverse-engineer".

The cotton gin is a great example. Easily reverse-engineered, but protected by patent nonetheless.

We know it was easily reverse-engineered because several people did just that. Never mind all the claims that Whitney's "invention" was simply the result of reverse-engineering gins in Europe/England.

Re:This is the nature of medical science

[h4rr4r]

The whole idea of patents is to force people to not use your method. If you invent a hammer for staples and I invent yet another hammer for staples that is fine.

If you invent a test for a certain metabolite and I make another test for the same thing that works in another way, how have I infringed?

To allow patenting the observation that this metabolite can indicate something about your health is absurd. Will scales be banned when I patent observing that obesity is an indicter for a heart disease risk?