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2009 Nobel Ribosome Structures — Patented
tabascoj writes 'The announcement of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is the latest reminder that fundamental components of biology are being increasingly, and aggressively, patented. A commentary, from yalepatents.org, focuses on the research and subsequent patents, held by Yale and Thomas Steitz, one of this year's laureates.'
Better yet, how can I patent my own DNA?
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
I'm going to go down there & patent shit, then sue any sod that has a crap.
What's the world coming to?
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
How can you patent something that nature already patented itself millions of years ago? Hasn't the patent run out yet?!
Insert tired old joke about Nobel/Noble.
In Nobel's own words:
"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind."
Seems to me someone shouldn't win for doing something that benefits their pocket books first, and mankind second.
Angry emails to the Nobel Foundation, GO!
Postal address: The Nobel Foundation
P.O. Box 5232, SE-102 45 Stockholm, Sweden
Street address: Sturegatan 14, Stockholm
Tel. +46 (0)8 663 09 20
Fax +46 (0)8 660 38 47
E-mail info@nobel.se
comments@nobelprize.org
How in the world do you patent something like this. I expect the people at the patent office see the patent request and are like "What the hell is this?" then a few guys pass it around and all decided they dunno what it is. So they shrug "Must be new" out comes the patent approved stamp!
New rule: you can not patent anything that you yourself did not create. No patents should be granted for any component of a naturally occuring system. Create an entirely novel system that doesn't exist in nature? Fine, have at it. On a separate note, it seems to me that with all the trouble we seem to be having with our 200+ year old patent system, that we ought to be able to devise a better system for encouraging innovation.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
But should research so fundamental to life, such as the ribosome structure, be locked up for commercial gainâ"like Dynamite? Should a private institution, such as Yale, have the only say over how ribosomes may be developed into new biomedical technologies?
No, research should never be locked up. The patent system should evolve to the point where laymen with appropriate field knowledge and the right tools can copy ANY patented technique.
Yes, Yale absolutely has a right to decide what they do with their patent. If they sit on it, that's fine. There are other methods of doing what they learned to do. If the license it, that's fine too. Giving businesses the ability to benefit from their basic research is a good thing.
If Yale accumulates a big enough patent portfolio and tampers with the free market, they should be subject to government investigations and penalties. But in the case of Yale... they'll license to patent to bring in money to fund more fundamental research to future Yale scientists can advance the state of the art even further.
If the author really wants to attack stupid biological patents, he should investigate (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the biggest offender is) Monsanto.
From the article, ...cover not only the process for determining the structure of the molecules, but also the computation used to design new antibiotics.
Now, this might not be saying the whole story, but it doesn't sound like the ribosomes are what's being patented (which would result in ire here). Instead, it's a technique of how to find what molecules and bindings are used by the ribosomes (or something along those lines.)
The second part, the computation, probably a little more evil, but again it's a little light on details.
I could probably do a patent search and see exactly what the abstracts are...but I doubt I could understand them without a tl;dr and a chemistry glossary.
Basically, there's undoubtedly something patentable within this process it's just a matter of making sure they've got the right thing patented. I don't see anyone patenting a gene or a molcule here so there's no "nature made this already" defense. Furthermore, I don't think anyone can exactly make an "obviousness" claim here; USPTO might be pretty lax about prior art, but I'd think the Nobel committee would be a bit more thorough about trying to locate prior research.
... at least read the summary carefully. They didn't patent the natural structures.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
... from anyone who patents what they won them for. The prizes should reward altruism, not greed.
Michael Crichton has warned about this before in his book Next and has apparently cause politics to take interest.
It's not the "fundamental components of biology" that are being patented. It's the new methods of manipulating and studying them. I don't really see the problem. Patents can be licensed and will eventually end. It costs a lot of money in R&D to do this research. Why should an organization bear this cost out of the kindness of their heart? Isn't this pretty much the point of the patent system? To promote the sharing of new and novel ideas while still protecting the inventor's/researcher's work?
I'm betting that the Article doesn't list a lot of googleable knowledge.
Are you looking for something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States
For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995,[1] the patent term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications).[2]
Except this is much more complex than just cut and paste. You can't patent, say, a person blowing air into glass for the purposes of shaping but you can patent a machine that performs the same operation.
The problem with this blog post is the author seems more bent on proclaiming "they patented this, patents are bad, therefore this is bad" rather than saying what parts of the patents are bad. There's obviously something novel in what was accomplished here. USPTO might be ignorant to prior art, but I doubt the Nobel committees are as lax.
Plus reading the patent abstracts don't do me much good either; I lack the necessary background to make any heads or tails of them. (Hell, I can't tell the diff between an -ane and an -ene without a cheat sheet.)
What I can tell is they're not patenting the ribosomes or any resulting compound created, but instead some method of isolating and analyzing them. This at least opens the door for a patent and is what the patent system was designed to protect. We have a methodology now that blue chip pharmecuticals are taking advantage of hand over fist but would never have gone through the risk of actually pioneering; it makes sense to have some of that trickle down to the people that actually created the process so they can continue research and make more breakthroughs (and allow the cycle to begin anew).
Especially not the claims. Reading the claims is tantamount to reading the article. The proper ./ method for commenting on a patent is to read the title, pick a few words out of the abstract, cry about how it's obvious and how patents are killing innovation, and cite as prior art some software that was released three years after the filing date and is irrelevant.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
On the plus side, it does give you some leverage with poorly-behaved children. :)
"Eat your vegetables, or I won't pay your license fee, and Monsanto will come to take you away!"
You could have stopped right there.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I disagree.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Also lends more credence to the various forms of "...meet your maker..." phrases...
The gates in my computer are AND, OR and NOT; they are not Bill.
It's true. The only problems with the patent system right now are:
* Patents in fields that advance far more quickly than physical industries are protected for the same amount of time (e.g. software)
* Patents can be trivially modified and re-submitted in order to "renew" an existing patent (e.g. pharma industry)
* Prior art reviews and obviousness tests are poorly done, relying mostly on court challenges after the fact to resolve such issues
Resolve those three problems and you have a patent system that accomplishes the original goal: to foster the advancement of the sciences and useful arts.
I've proposed solutions here before, but to re-cap:
1) Establish a product lifecylce metric for each industry and tie patent duration to reasonable multiples of the lifecycle (e.g. 2-4 times the time it takes to design and release a new product in that industry)
2) Enhance the review process and reject far more patents on the basis of prior art.
3) Open the prior art review process up to the public after the first round approval.
4) Establish fines for those who repeatedly submit applications for patents that have prior art (not just a couple of times, but as an ongoing business practice; the goal is not to hurt individuals who make mistakes).
"Eat your vegetables, or I won't pay your license fee, and Monsanto will come to take you away!"
Imagine their horror when they grow up and find out that, indeed, the boogeyman from their youth does really exist :-)
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