Slashdot Mirror
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.
A patent on the observation of cessation electrical activity in the heart, resulting in a pulse as a precursor to an eventual absence of a pulse.
In other words...He's dead, Jim.
Although I appreciate the distaste of making money off sick people, I don't think that applies. Promethius should be tied to a rock for a giant eagle to eat their livers.
They merely patented something that a "common knowledge" thing in drugs. It's how urine drug screening has worked for 20 years, it's how tons of drug effectiveness tests work (mostly drug screenings). It's a false monopoly, troll or not.
If they invented some sort of new test for the metabolites... like a special litmus stick which would tell you the levels of metabolites, that would be completely different.
So where does that leave me?
I'm the director of an analytical chemistry facility located at a university. We perform exactly the kinds of analysis described in the patents routinely (though not directly from blood, for various reasons). At the moment we're trying to set up a partnership with another (larger) university that has a medical school and hospital. Strangely enough, they don't have an analytical lab like the one I head, so we hope to work with them performing such analyses.
Will we be protected, as "outside contractors"? Will I need to search the patent literature every time someone submits a sample, or if I need to develop a new analysis protocol?
I briefly read through the patents, and they are absolutely disgusting. They look like scientific or medical review texts, without even a hint of new methods or protocols that could be (maybe, barely) defensible as patentable. This is an outright claim on knowledge itself.
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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?