US District Judge Rules Gene Patents Invalid

shriphani writes "A US judge has ruled that Myriad Genetics' breast cancer gene patent is invalid. Hopefully this will go a long way in ensuring that patents on genes do not stand in the way of research. From the article: 'Patents on genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer are invalid, ruled a New York federal court today. The precedent-setting ruling marks the first time a court has found patents on genes unlawful and calls into question the validity of patents now held on approximately 2,000 human genes.'"

Comments

Wow....

[nog_lorp]

I'm glad this is happening. It's a huge weight off my chest.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Did they steal your breast genes or something?

Re:Wow....

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Me too, they had my balls under a restraining order since puberty.

Conversely

[eldavojohn]

Hopefully this will go a long way in ensuring that patents on genes do not stand in the way of research.

And let us also hope that financial backers and investors don't pass on the idea of investing in said research without the potential payout of a full term patent.

As unpopular as the above statement is on Slashdot and as flawed as the patent system is, it still fulfills purposes making this at least a two sided issue. Ignoring either side is nothing but folly.

You can revise your statement to read: Hopefully it's a net positive for gene research.

Re:Conversely

[alex_guy_CA]

However, most research and medical breakthroughs come from publicly funded money, research, and institutions. They only find their way into the corporate portfolio latter.

Re:Conversely

[afidel]

Gene patents were always dubious to me, however patents on gene detection methods and kits should be fully capable of obtaining patent protection. It's like copyrights on facts vs collections.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

This is a double edged sword. If companies can't get a patent, why would they invest millions, even billions, into the research, if the moment they make a discovery, the company next door gets to profit from their research for free with ZERO seed investment.
Suddenly their competitors are all charging less because they have no costs to recoup, and the companies that are good enough at research to have made the breakthroughs go bankrupt and disappear.

Yeah, I wouldn't exactly call that win/win.

What this DOES do is essentially put all genetics research companies out of business, and leaves it to government organizations and government funded educational institutions to do the research.
Educational institutions, while they have been successful in many areas of research, are diversified in their funding, and can't even begin to touch the levels of specialized funding that the biotech corporations have for doing this kind of research.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

However, most research and medical breakthroughs come from publicly funded money, research, and institutions. They only find their way into the corporate portfolio latter.

[citation needed]

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely no way we can grant monopolies on certain aspects of life, to anyone. Whether it is a good business proposal to found science or not, it is not correct at all.

Patents like this come with the power to hold people ransom on existential needs. That cannot, ever, be right.

Another reason, Gene's are nature's "programming language". Once you can read some of it, reasonable efforts will help you to understand more of it.
 
  But, there is no point or fairness in granting anyone who finds out "something" first the right to, for many years, control its use. Things will be found out because people NEED to figure them out, even without prospect to get money from patents. This is also why you don't need to patent software - just because someone needed a selectable button and did it first, that does not mean they should be able to patent it and henceforth control all selectable buttons - someone will absolutely, positively need the exact same thing and would have figured it out themselves anyways, with a reasonable degree of certainty.

Re:Conversely

[Bigjeff5]

The genes can't be patented, because they were discovered, not created, and not discovered in the "OMG I just discovered how to make rubber!" kind of way. They were discovered in the "I just patented New England" kind of way.

Now, the tools and methods of discovery, those certainly should be patentable. The genes were always there, however, and we knew they were there somewhere, and the patent does not allow you to do anything with them, it just tells you where they are.

That is why it was struck down, and that is why this won't have any serious effect on medical research. The stuff that should be patentable is patentable, the stuff that should not be patentable is no longer patentable.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. They can actually make proper inventions. They can invent treatments that target the gene, detection methods to find the gene, methods to remove it, alter it, whatever.

Just because they found it doesn't mean it's patentable. It's naturally occurring, and they had nothing to do with creating it.

Imagine if the guys at the LHC discovered another fundamental force. Should they be able to patent it and claim royalties on everyone who "takes advantage" of their discovery of "new gravity"?

They discovered a gene. They shouldn't have patented it in the first place, they should have invested a tiny bit more to patent a efficient detection method, and still made shitloads of money.

Re:Conversely

[Burdell]

Do you think that an astronomer should be able to patent a planet because they saw it first? How about the particle physicists working on the LHC patenting the Higgs bosun if they find it (sorry, no gravity without a license!)? Why should someone be able to patent a naturally occurring gene, just because they found it first? If they find something original, such as an easy way to detect the presence or absence of a gene that can lead to illness, or a way to use that knowledge to treat the condition caused by the gene, patent away, but nobody should be able to patent something that has existed in thousands or millions of people for decades or centuries just because they were the first to track it down. They didn't invent or create anything.

Re:Conversely

[ArcherB]

Gene patents were always dubious to me, however patents on gene detection methods and kits should be fully capable of obtaining patent protection. It's like copyrights on facts vs collections.

I agree. How can you patent something that already exists? It would be like discovering some previously unknown roach and slapping a patent on it. Could you charge everyone whose home gets infested by these things? It's not like you invented it. You simply found it. Genes are in every single cell in our body. You can't patent them.

Now if you were to discover a gene sequence that does not naturally occur in nature... patent away. That might be pretty cool.

Re:Conversely

[MobyDisk]

I think the problem is that the hard part is finding the sequence. Once you know the sequence, there's tons of systems in place that can detect it. It's like spending a million dollars to find a number.

Re:Conversely

[martin-boundary]

Yeah, I wouldn't exactly call that win/win.

Then you need to learn some math. Lower drug prices is a WIN for customers. No patents to prevent public research breakthroughs is a WIN for science. That's two WINs, count'em.

If companies can't get a patent, why would they invest millions, even billions, into the research, if the moment they make a discovery, the company next door gets to profit from their research for free with ZERO seed investment.

For the same reason companies today invest millions, even billions into contributing to open source, like the Linux kernel, even though their competitors get to profit from those contributions for free with ZERO seed investment.

What this DOES do is essentially put all genetics research companies out of business,

Good riddance to bad rubbish. If the only way they can contribute research is by blocking others with patents, then we don't need their "research".

and leaves it to government organizations and government funded educational institutions to do the research.

That's a good idea. Medical breakthroughs should be available to all citizens unencumbered by patents, and at affordable prices, and that's the best way to ensure this in the long term. Some industries, like health care, are strategically important. Moreover, with fewer private companies to drain the smart people from universities, the next generation of students would have a higher quality education. Yet another WIN.

Re:Conversely

[robotkid]

As unpopular as the above statement is on Slashdot and as flawed as the patent system is, it still fulfills purposes making this at least a two sided issue. Ignoring either side is nothing but folly. You can revise your statement to read: Hopefully it's a net positive for gene research.

Good thought, especially for more tricky examples like patient-derived cell lines or naturally occurring therapeutic molecules, but in this case such worry is not warranted. Treatments, cures, diagnostics, etc are all still patentable, and they are what the investors were looking to make their money from in the first place.

The central issue at stake was whether the discovery of a gene in and of itself, which is just a snipped of biological information, was patentable, and all the resulting technology that utilized that information would be rendered derivative works. Think about that for a moment, if someone went out and discovered a new type of fish, maybe they'd get to name it but they certainly can't claim to own all future profits made by anyone else catching and selling that fish. More to the point, if someone then discovered that the fish produced a chemical that cured some disease, they original discoverer of the fish would not have the ability to sue and say that was reverse engineering of his patented intellectual property. Discovering a gene is not terribly different - it already existed all over the world long before we had to tools to identify and study it. Discovering is different than inventing, and in the case of genes discovery by itself is a far cry from understanding how it works, much less how to manipulate it to fix a disease.

Also, for context, the only real reason one would want to patent a gene is some sort of exclusivity clause (i.e. I discovered this breast cancer gene so now only I can work on a cure for it) or for patent trolling (now lets sue all the other folks working on breast cancer cures). Both scenarios would effectively destroy the ability for competing companies to work on the same disease, and lead to a massive gene-squatting free for all. IAAB (I am a biochemist), and I honestly can't think of any scenarios where being able to patent a naturally occurring gene would be good for either society as a whole or even just letting the market do what it does best.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Like patenting a large prime number?

Re:Conversely

[NFN_NLN]

However, most research and medical breakthroughs come from publicly funded money, research, and institutions. They only find their way into the corporate portfolio latter.

[citation needed]

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml

Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.

  Project goals were to

        * identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA,
        * determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,
        * store this information in databases, ...

Re:Conversely

[mibe]

Knowing that a gene is there means nothing. Having sequenced the human genome, it's trivial to identify genes (discover them, if you will) with bioinformatics. However, without patents there is no monetary incentive for identifying the function of a gene, which is a much more laborious and expensive process. Now, I think that gene patents are foolish and restrictive, but like the GP you can't just say "well no more gene patents" and be done with it, because then who would fund the research? The solution is for more public funding it would seem to me, since that would appear to suit the cooperative nature of science. Relying on private funding while abolishing gene patents sets the stage for a kind of secrecy that will be more hurtful than the patents were to begin with.

Re:Conversely

[PitaBred]

The device or a novel process? Yes. But you should not be able to patent the gene which effectively makes your device the only way to detect the disease. That is not what the patent system is for. It is for protecting novel inventions, not for locking up essential, basic knowledge with a toll booth.

Re:Conversely

[eldavojohn]

Also, for context, the only real reason one would want to patent a gene is some sort of exclusivity clause (i.e. I discovered this breast cancer gene so now only I can work on a cure for it) or for patent trolling (now lets sue all the other folks working on breast cancer cures). Both scenarios would effectively destroy the ability for competing companies to work on the same disease, and lead to a massive gene-squatting free for all. IAAB (I am a biochemist), and I honestly can't think of any scenarios where being able to patent a naturally occurring gene would be good for either society as a whole or even just letting the market do what it does best.

I am not a biochemist so I must ask some questions about your particular example with breast cancer genes. I'm lead to believe that 'discovering a breast cancer gene' is extremely difficult. Doesn't the number of sets of DNA one must collect coupled with the accuracy of those collections coupled with the willingness of the volunteers coupled with the number of potential snippets of DNA that could be the gene coupled with all sorts of other complications and permutations make finding such a gene like finding a needle in a haystack? Doesn't that require vast amounts of resources? And then to do it for all sorts of diseases?

Now explain to me how those losses are recouped in your model. That's all I was asking. Not saying that astronomers should be able to patent planets they find or that discoveries should be patentable ... although I did enjoy all the strawmen that were thrown at me and the fact that they were modded up. I also enjoyed that because we've sequenced the gene, that makes for prior art should anyone actually begin to investigate what those genes are responsible for. But back to playing the devil's advocate. Here are proposed assumptions:

1. The odds of finding the breast cancer gene (or gene set, right?) are astronomically high.
2. Unfortunately, this is the only way to cure breast cancer once and for all.
3. If you found this, since it involved lottery winning odds you would recoup your investment at a lottery winning payout.
4. This doesn't mean you get to sue everyone who was looking for the gene(s) that caused breast cancer, it means if anyone uses your genes to develop a cure, you get royalties for that patent term.
5. Other teams can keep looking for a gene, they just have to normalize their data so that they aren't looking for your already discovered gene or (after checking your work against their data) doubt the accuracy of your samples and continue on with their quest.

Patent trolls are patent trolls. You'll find them anywhere you find patents. I scoff at your claims of gene squatting as you have to say what the gene does and pay the huge patent fees to get the patent (so you can't just patent each gene as the breast cancer gene).

Good luck with your work. I am glad that gene patents are invalid. I was merely expressing a mild amount of discomfort that it could have a negative overall effect. If you can assert that I'm confused or misinformed, I'd be a very happy man.

The volatility (put/call orders) on Myriad Genetics tells me this is going to have profound effects on genetics companies, I hope the best for your employment and hope that the entire genetics industry (and above searches) don't become insane burdens on the taxpayer.

Re:Conversely

[afidel]

Making a test that can cheaply identify a specific gene sequence is still a major goal of biotech firms. Today to get a screening for a handful of known cancer and heart disease risks cost over $1,200, much too expensive to be a routine test for the majority of health insurance customers. Drop that cost by 10x and suddenly you have a much larger market.

Re:Conversely

[sweatyboatman]

I'm sorry, this is a very poor argument.

without patents there is no monetary incentive for identifying the function of a gene

If you figure out the function of a gene you can then make a drug to suppress or improve the function of the gene. Or whatever else. And that drug will be, wait for it, patentable! And when that patent comes out and the FDA approves the drug, it's gonna be kinda obvious to people who should know what the drug you're patenting does to what genes and why.

Perhaps what you mean to say is that without patents, when private industry figures out the function of a gene they will keep it to themselves. But that still doesn't make much sense. Unless you're going to take that information and make a treatment out of it, you're not going to be able to monetize it. (And as soon as you make a treatment, you're going to have to explain to the FDA how that treatment works.)

You could, I suppose, make a treatment and not patent it (like a trade secret). But then you're running the extreme risk of having someone else steal/recreate your discovery and patent your medicine out from under you.

Regardless, the motive to research the function of genes is that if you can figure out what a gene does (and it does something useful), you can develop patentable treatments that manipulate that gene. Patenting the gene is just the icing on the cake.

Re:Conversely

[eldavojohn]

Medical breakthroughs should be available to all citizens unencumbered by patents, and at affordable prices, and that's the best way to ensure this in the long term.

You have missed my point entirely. Without massive private funding these "medical breakthroughs" (which I'm led to believe are needle-in-haystack searches) happen at a slower rate. If that sets it back more than the length of a patent (which is 20 years in the US) then it's a negative net effect on the genetic cures we find for people.

You'll have more affordable cures for the first 20 years but after that the prices will be the same. The difference could be the number of cures and their quality.

Just because we hate patents doesn't mean we have to shut off our brains when we reason out capitalism does it?

Re:Conversely

[einhverfr]

I dunno. What constitutes infringement of such a gene patent?

I think it's fiarly obvious that exclusive rights to genes, read literally, would be stupid. After all, that would allow the pharmaceutical company to go around suing breast cancer patients for patent infringement on the theory that they probably have the patented genes. If these are not provided for in statute specificaly, I don't think they should be subject to patent.

The closest thing I can think of are plant patents, but they are surprisingly limited. If I buy two patented roses, I can hybridize them without running afoul with the patent laws at least here in the US. OTOH, if I propagate from cuttings, I am infringing. OTOH a properly cared for rose bush will outlive the patent anyway so I can just wait.... Same thing with apple trees.

I am not saying that gene patents are entirely bad, but before we go around allowing them we had better define in statute exactly what rights are granted and not just extend by judicial fiat the patent system to those areas.

Re:Conversely

[afidel]

Conversely if you take the money that goes to fat upper management. massive marketing departments, and stockholder profits and plow it back into research you probably end up with more cures. The free market isn't always the most efficient way of accomplishing things despite what some of its adherents like to think.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

The current money formula is:
Grant + Patent = Profit

Now you're removing the patent money from the mix.
So the question is, will the grant money be enough to both fund the research and provide enough profit incentive to the researchers so they don't spend their time elsewhere.

Re:Conversely

[laughingcoyote]

But the fact still remains, any treatment, drug, etc., based upon the gene's discovery, is as patentable as it ever was. The only thing you can't patent is the gene itself, and that's quite correct. If you discover a certain isotope, and find a way to make workable fusion energy from it, you can patent your reactor, but not the isotope itself. That's exactly how the patent system is meant to work-you can patent things you invent, but not things you just find.

That being said, it always saddens me to see "capitalism" thrown around like it's some unimpeachable, unquestionable good force. I wish people would question it, as it's sure got an awful lot of negatives. At some point, I sure hope we can find a better system.

Re:Conversely

[T Murphy]

While I agree the patent system needs work, being so one-sided may be a bit too far. I support the use of government money to fund medical research (the saving lives kind, not the blue pill kind), but there is only so much money out there. Unlike copyrights, medical patents do expire, so these corporate-funded breakthroughs benefit everyone in the end (of course, Big Pharma wants to change this).

The government only has so much money to put into research, so it should be focused on things that take longest to become profitable (mostly basic research). If a corporation thinks it can turn a profit on a drug before the patent expires, that's a privately funded project the government doesn't have to pay for. By the time the government could afford to do the research, the patent may be reaching expiration anyways.

The lack of patents may allow for more branch-off research, but I wouldn't be confident that could make up for what patented research can do. Given we are talking about breakthroughs that could save lives, I think we have to choose the more reliable route, even if some aspects are disagreeable.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

That being said, it always saddens me to see "capitalism" thrown around like it's some unimpeachable, unquestionable good force.

He did what now?

Re:Conversely

[TooMuchToDo]

If there isn't a financial return, who is going to drop billions of dollars into biotech research? The government? Academia? Perhaps. But not as much research will have been done compared to all of the private companies out there in addition to gov and edu researchers. I'm not saying genes should be patented, but the money has to come from somewhere.

Re:Conversely

[Cryacin]

+5 insightful for listing the better model.

Anybody?


...

I guess we're stuck with capitalism for a while longer.

Re:Conversely

[mibe]

But you don't need to research the function of the gene to develop a patentable treatment, so long as you know the guy down the street is going to research the function and let everyone know.

For instance, Myriad made their money by sequencing BRCA genes - but they only sequence BRCA because they figured out the function of the genes in breast cancer risk. The first part (sequencing tests) is easy, I can quite literally design a sequencing test for that tomorrow (I am a molecular geneticist), but figuring out which genes to sequence and why is the hard part. All I have to do is sit around and wait for some sucker to put in all the R&D money into finding out - for instance - the big autism gene, and then once he's done that I can immediately begin making money off of his work by offering a test for it.

Once again, abolishing gene patents alone isn't the answer. Abolishing gene patents removes the incentive for private funding of genetic research - we need more public funding to fill in the gaps, or private funding will only continue on a condition of secrecy.

Re:Conversely

[QuantumG]

You can do all the research you like, it won't save lives. You can figure out how to make a drug that will cure [insert undesirable disease here] and publish the formula on the Internet.. watch as no-one will pay for the clinical trials to make the drug legal to sell.

Re:Conversely

[Israfels]

Wasn't the Human Genome Project just used to map the human genome? I wasn't aware that they did "research and medical breakthroughs".

It's the difference between reading a book and writing a book.

Re:Conversely

[besalope]

The drug formulas can still patented.

The judge just invalidated corporate patents that restricted others from working on trying to cure problems from "patented" genes without paying royalties.

Re:Conversely

[mweather]

That ignores the researchers who were paying patent royalties, which far exceed those receiving them. In the end it makes far more research affordable than unaffordable.

Re:Conversely

[dudpixel]

The stuff that should be patentable is patentable, a very tiny fraction of the stuff that should not be patentable is no longer patentable.

there, fixed it for you.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a treatment NOT be patentable?

Where this kind of thing really sucks is testing. You know, the whole "personalized medicine" schtick? Let's say you want to go to 23 and Me or your local clinical lab and find out what predispositions you may have. The price of that test, should the genes be patentable, would be extreme as the mere inclusion of that gene in the test would trigger a royalty payment to someone. TFA said there were over 2000 genes patented. Suddenly a test that should cost $400 is now $4000 because of all the patents that need to be paid. They want to charge you royalties just for reading your own genetic sequence.

Hell, if someone has a drug that works well, they deserve to get paid well, they've solved a problem. But if you tell me I have to pay you just to look at my own source code?

>captcha code: designed.... is this actually random?

Re:Conversely

[mevets]

Maybe they can strike claims to them, like in mining.

"The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights." JP Getty.

Re:Conversely

[xenn]

Monsanto and the US law system think so.

You better be careful not to let anything happen at any time in future. Else you are liable.

Re:Conversely

[QuantumG]

So instead of a race to mass produce the unpatentable drug you have a race to produce the drug for the unpatentable gene. Whatever machinery you want to use to create the situation, the cost of clinical trials means drug companies need exclusivity from lab to drug store. The alternative is nationalized drug creation.. not that there's anything wrong with that, but know where your argument is going.. as the trials have become too expensive to expect drug companies to do in a race.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ironic that we can even call this newer thinking "science." The whole point of the scientific method is to allow for peer review and improvement. For centuries, mathematicians and inventors have been building upon one another's work without compensation expectations --they were already schooled and rich enough to be in their advantaged positions. How can Galileo patent finding moons with his telescope, therefore keeping others from legally verifying there is a moon there at all? Now that everyone is educated and the Earth is overcrowded, everyone is finding the need to grab on to something intangible because the bar of competition has been raised so high beyound our humble ~1500's scientific history.

The problem is this: someone discovers the existance of gasoline for the first time and patents it, knowing that it can be used to move vehicles, but having no clue to where, and how or for how much. By patenting it just so they can be the only ones to build a car, they're keeping all other scientists from using the now findable gasoline to create automobiles --which sardonically, is yet ANOTHER process the person will create a new patent for... This second part is the real point of patents. Patenting before you have a process to create something is absurd. Having a question in your hands has never entitled you to be the only person looking for the solution, and you wil probably die before finding a solution to patent.

All scientists know that discoveries are unexpected, with unpredictable implications, and research leading to the random discovery is costly. However, it is merely voluntary research, having calculated costs an budgets. Governments do not sign contracts beforehand to guarantee full ownership of a cure that you may never find --that stifles the chances of finding it in the same way that OSS software bugs must not be "owned" by any one individual fixer. Scientists know full well that the discovery becomes public knowledge, but discovering provides an understanding the item that other "leechers" as many posters here would call them, would use. Ownership and entitlement are poorly understood this day and age, especially when it comes to things you cannot hide, capture or prevent the copying of for good or for evil.

Re:Conversely

[Nethead]

eldavojohn: Most insightful. The one day I don't have mods.

Re:Conversely

[reverseengineer]

The real issue, in my opinion, with these patents is that Myriad tries to make the information of the gene sequence essential to any detection method for that gene. Take a look at Myriad's patent for the breast cancer-related gene BRCA2. Right at the beginning, "Specifically, the present invention relates to methods and materials used to isolate and detect a human breast cancer predisposing gene (BRCA2), some mutant alleles of which cause susceptibility to cancer, in particular breast cancer. More specifically, the invention relates to germline mutations in the BRCA2 gene and their use in the diagnosis of predisposition to breast cancer." So at first glance, you might think that this patent refers to a diagnostic test for BRCA2, which seems to be an acceptable place for a patent for many people. After all, DNA sequences are just molecules, and there are any number of non-contentious patented tests for biological molecules already- think of glucose test strips, for instance. Manufacturers have found ways to patent various advances in testing for blood glucose without actually asserting a patent on glucose itself.

However, when you test for something like glucose, the test result is going to be a concentration. When you talk about performing a test for BRCA2-based cancer susceptibility, you don't just need to "detect" BRCA2, but be able to isolate it and determine whether it differs from the wild-type BRCA2. So Myriad had the idea that in their patent claims they could define their "methods and materials" to be both the likely molecular bio technique intermediates, and also the molecules that are the theoretical outcomes of any BRCA2 test.

Paraphrasing some of their claims: -We claim the isolated normal BRCA2 sequence, and any isolated subset of that sequence comprised of at least 15 contiguous nucleotides.
-We claim the isolated major mutant sequence of BRCA2 known to be involved in susceptibility to cancer, and any isolated subset of that sequence comprised of at least 15 contiguous nucleotides.
-We claim nearly 40 different variants of the major mutant sequence.
-We claim any sort of cloning vector, expression vector, recombinant cell line, or PCR primer involving an at least 15 contiguous nucleotide stretch of any of the above sequences.

So Myriad was trying to claim that the invention was a diagnostic method, just that any molecule corresponding to the nucleotide sequences they claimed were an intrinsic part of the "method." What's interesting about the "15 contiguous nucleotides" mention that keeps cropping up is that BRCA2 is over 11000 nucleotides long, producing a protein 3400 amino acids long, such that Myriad laid claim to tiny fragments of the gene which would have had no BRCA2 function on their own.

Re:Conversely

[greentshirt]

If you don't think mapping out the human genome was a research milestone, you're sadly misinformed.

Re:Conversely

[Nethead]

And that money that was invested into that research has to pay dividends. And if the knowledge that research provided is locked up in a patent that you can't afford to pay for and you will die because that information ABOUT YOUR BODY is patented. Then you die.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno. What constitutes infringement of such a gene patent?

I think it's fiarly obvious that exclusive rights to genes, read literally, would be stupid. After all, that would allow the pharmaceutical company to go around suing breast cancer patients for patent infringement on the theory that they probably have the patented genes. If these are not provided for in statute specificaly, I don't think they should be subject to patent.

Then the converse would be true. Breast cancer patients would be able to counter-sue the breast cancer gene patent holder on the basis that the patent holder's patented gene sequence caused the plaintiff to develop breast cancer.

IANAL of course but it seems to me that actual physical harm would trump an intellectual property violation if it went to trial.

Re:Conversely

[TooMuchToDo]

And if the knowledge that research provided is locked up in a patent that you can't afford to pay for and you will die because that information ABOUT YOUR BODY is patented. Then you die.

You die anyway if the knowledge is never known because no one shelled out for the research.

Re:Conversely

[sjames]

Evil thought: How about e turn it around. If I claim ownership of a dog, and that dog bites someone, I am liable for the medical bills.

If a biotech firm claims ownership of a gene and that gene causes cancer, they should be liable for the cancer. Perhaps they would be better off with a narrow patent on a particular method of screening for that gene's presence.

Re:Conversely

[Nethead]

Yo, mod this AC up as interesting.

Re:Conversely

[POds]

I guess this would be similar to someone patenting a new found stable Atom/chemical and neither of us would expect that to be possible. I.e you can't patent Unranium.

Re:Conversely

[Sique]

The government and academia are dropping billions of dollars into biotech right now, even with patents. So what's the point?
And no. Just identifying a genome and explaining its properties is not patentable. If you discover an hitherto unknown species of beetle and describe it and its ecology you don't get a patent on it either. You just get the right to name it.
Currently my body belongs to me (restrictions may apply). If I do something with it, feed it a certain way, train it a certain way, I am free to do so without a patent license. But if my genome gets mapped and patented, suddenly I have to make sure that none of the things I do with my body are patent encumbred. Do I know which genes I affect? Which of them are patented? What the patent claims are?
The point is: My body was here before the patents. It hasn't changed by the patents. But the patents change what I am allowed to do with it. I have an anomalous hemogram. I know that certain things are easier for me (I don't get exhausted that easily), and others are more dangerous (my blood tends to coagulate more easily). If someone patents the gene combination that causes my condition, are I am still allowed to go running? If I am taking heparine as a measure of precaution, have I to pay a patent license fee? I don't know exactly the mechanism behind all this, but if someone explains the biochemistry behind it and patents the genes, am I infringing on his patents just because he can explain why the things I do work?

Re:Conversely

[Nethead]

You're right, in the end, we all die.

Re:Conversely

[sjames]

Consider LHC. It's a HUGE and very expensive piece of apparatus that MIGHT find a fundamental particle or two. If/when it does, there can be no patent issued. Yet there it is. It was built anyway, and many physicists will spend many years using it to make this un-patentable discovery. Unlike the biotech firms, making the discovery won't even let them get to market first with anything at all.

Re:Conversely

[sjames]

At the rate things are going, it may be better to have slower breakthroughs that lead to treatments people can actually get than faster ones that practically nobody can afford.

The thing to do from there is lobby for more public funding of research.

Re:Conversely

[turbidostato]

"And let us also hope that financial backers and investors don't pass on the idea of investing in said research without the potential payout of a full term patent."

I prefer your "hope" than current status. Specially when your hope is more than backed up by past reality (there *was* gene research prior to gene patentability as there was software development prior to software patentability, so your fears are off-based).

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

So whats your point?
The LHC was built because someone funded it, specifically various governments. Like employees of biotech companies the physicists who work on it are paid salaries. Since money goes not come from magical pixie trees biotech companies just like CERN need an actual source of it. Since governments apparently aren't funding things enough, even universities are patenting things left and right, the funding has to come from somewhere. So how much do you want to have your taxes go up to pay for the biotech research?

Re:Conversely

[BitZtream]

Actually, doing it first does give you the right to patent it. Thats kind how patents work.

I realize you're talking about what you 'think' it should be, but you are a minority. The law and the general population disagree with your statements apparently.

You also misunderstand one of the points of patents which is to grant certain benefits to someone who makes their invention available for others too look at and extend.

You say the guy that did it first doesn't get anything special.

You live in a fantasy universe. The world is filled full of natural examples of how being first gives you a solid distinct advantage. If you'd like to take away the organized methods we use now and fall back to more traditional methods such as fighting to the death then I'm all for it. However I'm guessing that you don't finish first, hence your wanting the guy who does to not have an advantage ... Fortunately, those of us who do work harder and finish first will continue to be the ones who make the rules.

Sorry you're lazy or incapable, you can whine moan and complain, but you'll still finish second and have to deal with someone else having the advantage. Change the 'law' make it something different, you'll still be second.

So I'm guessing you're blaming things like Androids shitty interface on the fact that someone like Apple holds patents on the things that make a phone UI not suck ass? You think that they just got lucky in their work in a few years compared to the 20 years or so head start the other major players had on them?

No. They didn't get lucky. They busted their ass, threw the right researchers at it and came up with a winner. Now you just want anyone else to be able to do it because they would have figured it out anyway? No, they wouldn't have. They weren't putting any effort into making cellphones not suck ass before hand.

The iPod and iPhone are clear examples of someone putting more effort into making a product better than the competition and deserving not to just have everyone else copycat it tomorrow.

Sorry you're a loser, but you'll stay one until you realize that the winners aren't sitting around talking about how everything should be fair, they are out there winning, thats not going to change.

Re:Conversely

[oiron]

And if someone, purely out of random mutation naturally develops that sequence? Sue them for infringement?

Re:Conversely

[BitZtream]

Wow, I can not believe you actually made those statements on slashdot. I mean I do it, but I like to watch the angsty little slashdotter heads explode after pointing their own self loathing out to them.

You do know common sense and practicality are completely lost on anyone here, right? This place is filled with a bunch of highschool and college kids who still haven't figured out that the utopian world their professors told them was out there is a fictional universe that only exists in the minds of professors and inside school buildings. You can't go off and use common sense here, whats wrong with you man?

Re:Conversely

[Fred_A]

Conversely if you take the money that goes to fat upper management. massive marketing departments, and stockholder profits and plow it back into research you probably end up with more cures. The free market isn't always the most efficient way of accomplishing things despite what some of its adherents like to think.

In pharmacy, it seems pretty clear cut that nowadays it's among the worst. Pretty much no pharmacy lab does real research any more because there's too little ROI. They mostly repackage molecules and research marketing instead.

Creating a new market segment is much more profitable than creating a new cure.

Re:Conversely

[BitZtream]

Check your funding a little closer. Most of that money comes from grants by drug companies that gets donated to the government to be disseminated to research projects.

Don't get me wrong, we're (public) losing in the deal but its actually not nearly as bad as you think. They occasionally buy us dinner and bring lube with them.

Re:Conversely

[Ponyegg]

It's the difference between reading a book and writing a book.

Which makes Avery, MacLeod & McCarty the creators of the language the book was written in then.

Re:Conversely

[Fred_A]

+5 insightful for listing the better model.

Anybody? ...
I guess we're stuck with capitalism for a while longer.

I can't believe nobody can find a better system than capitalism even when offered a +5 insightful as incentive. People are so apathetic nowadays...

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

You claimed "most". Citation mentions *one*. Fail.

Re:Conversely

[cgenman]

The flip side to this is that patents have always covered inventions, not discoveries. One couldn't, for example, patent Quantum Physics. Or Florida. They could patent ways of using quantum physics for computing or other applications, but not the basic discovery itself. Patents by law cover inventions and nothing else. Discovering genes that do something is not a form of invention, but pure research. Whether or not you think there should be protection for pure research in the US (besides trade secrets, of course), there currently isn't.

Gene companies will have to get their patents the old fashioned way: by actually inventing a cure for something. Simply saying "anyone who wants to cure or treat Lou Gherig's disease needs to pay us a royalty for discovering it first" is simply no longer viable.

Re:Conversely

[urusan]

+5 insightful for listing the better model.

Anybody?

I guess we're stuck with capitalism for a while longer.

How about a post-scarcity economy based mostly on nano-assemblers and solar power?

The hard part is getting there...we're still stuck with capitalism for a while longer, and even when we get there we'll almost certainly keep many of the trappings and technologies of capitalism, like currency for providing liquidity in trading.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no kidding. It's an old Slashdot arguing tactic. Pick a random word or phrase out of a post, quote it out of context, and reject the post out of wrongful interpretation. Ironically, he only repeated the point eldavojohn made (and I don't even like the guy).

Re:Conversely

[umghhh]

I can suppose you can patent novel way of using them but what sense does it make to patent existing thing - is this what you think? If the company invented this cancer gene I suppose it should be also liable for all the damage it causes - I can imagine all the women that got cancer (or say all such US women) filing suits against these bastards as they invented a gene that took their health (and possible life) away. I think that should teach them bastards.

Note that I fully agree with the right of the inventor to profit on his/her invention but this right should be limited somewhere and court decided to put some limits there. It is good so.

Re:Conversely

[robotkid]

I am not a biochemist so I must ask some questions about your particular example with breast cancer genes. I'm lead to believe that 'discovering a breast cancer gene' is extremely difficult.

It was the first time it was done. Since then, the cost for sequencing an entire human genome has fallen to under $10,000, expected to go down to $1,000 within a year or two. Less comprehensive diagnostics are even cheaper than that - think paternity testing expensive, not "you need your own research institution" expensive.

Doesn't the number of sets of DNA one must collect coupled with the accuracy of those collections coupled with the willingness of the volunteers coupled with the number of potential snippets of DNA that could be the gene coupled with all sorts of other complications and permutations make finding such a gene like finding a needle in a haystack? Doesn't that require vast amounts of resources? And then to do it for all sorts of diseases?

This is the key misconception. Finding disease-linked genes and mutations was extremely difficult in the pre-human genome era. The technology is currently getting cheaper and faster to the same tune as CPU power, it's rather a routine type of exercise now. The problem is that, except for the most trivial of cases, simply isolating and sequencing these genes alone brings us very little insight as to the underlying mechanism of the disease.

The gene probably codes for a protein of unknown function, so you have to isolate it and purify it and figure out what it does. It probably interacts with an unknown number of other proteins, often also of unknown function, so you have to figure all of that too, by knocking the gene out of a rat or mouse. The gene probably gets turned on and off or levels inbetween by other genes, so you have to map out all those interactions too. It probably acts different in diseases tissues vs healthy tissues, so you need to study it in cell culture to figure out the difference. And, of course, if you actually want to bind candidate drugs to it, then you might need to figure out the 3-D structure of the protein so you know the shape and size of any achilles heels it might have. But even after all that, you're still probably screwed because often things works very differently in a test tube than in cell culture than in rats than it does in chimpanzees than it does in actual human patients. But you can't test your hypothesis by mucking with the genes of actual humans, apparently that's unethical :-)

My point is you could spend an entire PhD on every one of these little parts and still not understand how they interact to cause a disease. But you CAN study it - that is the advance that having sequenced the gene allows - before that, we were completely in the dark. But it's a starting address, no more and no less.

it means if anyone uses your genes to develop a cure, you get royalties for that patent term.

Sequencing a gene is cheap, like I said, you seem to assume it's prohibitively expensive. Can one patent raw biological information? If you are Monsanto, then you can patent a GMO that you've added a drought resistance gene into. It's a new creation, and you can describe exactly how you did it and exactly what it does. That requires a level of understanding of a gene that is so detailed that it certainly should be patentable. But I submit to you that noone currently understands what most cancer genes actually DO. Can you patent something if you don't understand how it works? Most of the patents in question barely provide any explanation, if at all, about how a gene actually works. The descriptions read like stuff from high-school biology textbooks. They are really that bad, I kid you not.

I scoff at your claims of gene squatting as you have to say what the gene does and pay the huge patent fees to get the patent (so you can't just patent each gene as the breast cancer ge

Re:Conversely

[AK Marc]

You can still patent the vaccine for polio (which the inventor could have patented and declined to because he thought it should be free), but you can't patent the genetic sequence of it. You can patent any treatment for breast cancer you want. However, patenting a discovery about a gene linked to breast cancer can't be done. There's nothing at all in this ruling that would jeopardize any actual or potential treatment or cure. The patent was to block research so no one could treat the "disease" as if someone patented polio was was suing anyone else working on a cure for polio.

Re:Conversely

[AK Marc]

The world is filled full of natural examples of how being first gives you a solid distinct advantage.

But the system isn't set up to honor all firsts. The first person to, say, eat an entire bicycle couldn't get a patent on eating bicycles. Finding things doesn't get you patents. You don't patent a new bug discovered, so why should you be able to patent its genetic code?

They are trying to patent a discovered star and charge all astronomers that look at it. The star was there before them. If they used a new method for discovering it, patent the process or device or whatever. But the actual item that was there before they were born and will be there long after they are dead is not patentable. It wasn't invented, created, or in any way modified by the person filing the patent. They did no work to make it. Patents are for making things, and nothing was made by the person filing, and the thing existed before they filed - it's its own prior art.

Re:Conversely

[umghhh]

Yes fish - every night I dream about holding a life fish in my hand.....

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue the parents; they created the sequence.

Re:Conversely

[Daniel Dvorkin]

And let us also hope that financial backers and investors don't pass on the idea of investing in said research without the potential payout of a full term patent.

Maybe you missed the identities of the plaintiffs: geneticists and cancer patients. And some of the friends-of-the-court on the side of the plaintiffs: "the American Medical Association, the March of Dimes and the American Society for Human Genetics" as listed in TFA.

In other words, the people who actually do the work, the people who apply the work, and the people who benefit from the work all wanted the patent (and in general, want all gene patents) overturned. Look, when investors, scientists, physicians, and patients can all agree and work together, that's great. But if investors are on one side and scientists, physicians, and patients are on the other ... who do you think is going to do more to actually do the research and put it into practice?

Re:Conversely

[QuantumG]

Yep, and it's worse than that. But eliminating the patentability of genes they've made it profitable to do secret research and never publish the results. In fact, one might say that's the point of patents.. to make public disclosure still profitable.

Re:Conversely

[coastwalker]

Hey Joe, if we want to research genes that make people sick then we have a perfect investment vehicle for it and its called the State. State funded research doesn't have to make a return for grasping parasites like you and can be done for purely aesthetic reasons or for the greater good of humanity. The patent system has largely become a way for large corporations to keep competitors out of the market and to destroy all third world businesses. Patenting genes is a prime example of this.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

nethead: His karma is already a googol-bazillion. They're running out of subinfinite integers to quantify it.

Re:Conversely

[AK Marc]

You're not really this ignorant are you?

Yes, I am. I understand that the patent system only patents creations and not discoveries. That makes me ignorant.

Ok, I'm a researcher, I want to find out the genetic cause of some untreatable disease.. because I want the disease to be treated. Who's going to pay for my lab time?

You either look out there for those who have posted requests for researchers and do what they ask, or you write proposals. Duh, now who's ignorant?

Previously, I could go to industry and say "ok, here's my credentials, you get the patents, deal?" and that's where the funding could come from.

Ah, so you are a whore who sells his soul for profit. And you blame people like me for getting in the way of you selling yourself for profit. You do all the work, they get all the rewards, and the two of you lock out everyone else. And, once the patent on the discovery is obtained, they use it to *prevent* a cure for profit for themselves at the cost of lives. And you like that system because it's easier for you to make money in that system.

No drug companies target the genes I discovered for treatments. After all, that'd start a race and no drug company can afford to get into a race.

So, making the first drug and patenting it to block others would make them billions, but they won't try because they would spend money and someone else might come up with something first? So, 400 years later, when the gene is known for hundreds of years and no one has started making a drug to fight it, do you think that one of them might try? No, they'll still be paralyzed because they think someone else might do it at the same time? Yup, that's consistent with your logic so far. After all, since the swine flu was well known, no one tried to make a vaccine for it. Or polio. Or HPV. Nope, those are well known viruses, so no one would ever waste money trying to cure those because someone else might also come up with a cure.

Re:Conversely

[HungryHobo]

and no drug company can afford to get into a race

well they'll be poor drug companies in a few years when their current patents run out then.

No drug companies target the genes I discovered for treatments. After all, that'd start a race and no drug company can afford to get into a race.

Really?
Drug companies aren't interested in potentially lucrative drug patents?
By that logic they'd never fund your research to find the genetic cause of some untreatable disease since they'd be in a race with other companies to locate those genes and patent them.
Which is complete bullshit.

Drug companies are always in a race, this just moves the starting line a little further along and allows more people take part.

Re:Conversely

[zehaeva]

Is this any different than Mathematicians doing research on complex mathematical proofs? Or Physicists researching elementary particles?

Is it really in the interest of the public if Fermilab was able to patent the Top Quark?

How about if Pi or e or c were patentable?

The genes existed before and would continue to exist and do its thing long before and after these researchers discovered it.

A Sewing machine however didn't exist before Thomas Saint made one.

It has always been a possibility that secret research is profitable. The recipe of Coke and Pepsi are secrets and both products of possibly thousands of hours of research and both Coca Cola and Pepsi make money hand over fist for their "Secret" research. It's called a Trade Secret. It has special protections and rules under patent law.

If some company wants to leaves a small sequence of genes as their "Secret Sauce" to discovering Breast Cancer then all the power to them.

But nothing stops me from trying to imitate Coke or Pepsi and nothing would then stop me from trying to imitate their discovery of the Breast Cancer Gene.

~Zehaeva

Re:Conversely

[elecmahm]

Can someone please explain that to Monsanto?

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, those of us who do work harder and finish first will continue to be the ones who make the rules.

Please, do tell what fantasy world this is where what one does, as opposed to who one knows, reigns supreme. While it's inspiring that you still believe in an egalitarian meritocracy, once you wake up from fairy-tale land and join us in the real world, you'll see that those that "make the rules" are not at all those that have worked the hardest. Keep dreaming, sport.

Sorry you're a loser, but you'll stay one until you realize that the winners aren't sitting around talking

I bet those same winners aren't sitting around making long, drawn out posts on the internet, either. Either you need to get back to work, or you need to accept that you, too, are a loser - by your own criteria.

Re:Conversely

[Burdell]

There is a path to financial return: apply the knowledge you have discovered! There is a lot of money to be made by the person that can figure out how to block a gene that triggers an illness. Don't just expect to isolate a gene and sit back and roll in the money.

Re:Conversely

[Lunix Nutcase]

That ignores the researchers who were paying patent royalties, which far exceed those receiving them.

[citation needed]

Re:Conversely

[chowdahhead]

Not necessarily, take insulin as an example. It was the first real genetically engineered biopharmaceutical, created, if I remember well, by inserting a plasmid for the human gene encoding insulin into E.coli. While we still use regular human insulin, analog insulins have replaced it due to more desirable kinetics. These insulins, slightly modified, are novel pharmaceuticals and are patented. So while the human gene encoding insulin and the insulin peptide itself are not patented, medications currently produced using this information are, and improved analog insulins are still being developed. There is still ongoing research in non-injectable insulin as well. Finally, patents are usually applied for early on during the pharmaceutical development process, which is why drugs typically only have 5-7 years of exclusivity once they are marketed. The really hard part (and the point of failure for most promising compounds) of drug R&D is the "D" part--taking an investigational compound that has biological activity from the initial development process to something that is safe, efficacious, and practical to administer. A gene doesn't need to be patented for a company to have exclusivity and would only retard competition.

Re:Conversely

[osgeek]

Another reason, Gene's are nature's "programming language". Once you can read some of it, reasonable efforts will help you to understand more of it.

So reverse engineering them should be adjudicated under the DMCA?

:) for the humor impaired.

Re:Conversely

[ArtemaOne]

This is what they do with genetically modified crops. If your crop gets infected you have to pay.

Re:Conversely

[osgeek]

I agree that the money needs to come from somewhere if the research is going to be done... but warping the already-overused patent system, or copyright system doesn't seem to be the right way to go.

Common sense should still rule when discussing the patenting of information that's locked up inside of all of us. When anesthesia was first used to perform an operation, was the knowledge of that process patented? I would doubt it. Did advances continue without contriving a revenue stream for the very knowledge of that process? Yes.

Like with open source software or the "free" internet, the money will come from somewhere. Advances will continue. Will advances be as fast without contriving bizarre ownership rules? I don't know. I'd rather come out of this with common sense intact rather than more rapid advances, though.

Re:Conversely

[mcgrew]

So, 400 years later, when the gene is known for hundreds of years and no one has started making a drug to fight it

Unlike copyrights, patents only last 20 years. If patents lasted as long as copyright, technological progress would slow to a snail's pace.

As to the fellow you're arguing with, he worships money and loves it above all else. Getting into a religious argument is pointless.

Re:Conversely

[melikamp]

the cost of clinical trials means drug companies need exclusivity from lab to drug store

What does this mean? That no drugs would be developed sans patent system? That fewer drugs will be developed sans patent system? They can hand-wave all they want about incentive, but neither proposition can be justified with stats. What we do have is statistically significant evidence of patents driving up the costs of drugs and destroying competition.

It is true, though, that the current business model of the pharmaceutical industry in US is based on exploiting the patent law and has no chance of working without it.

Re:Conversely

[blueskies]

How is that not pure research?

Re:Conversely

[TooMuchToDo]

There is a lot of money to be made by the person that can figure out how to block a gene that triggers an illness. Don't just expect to isolate a gene and sit back and roll in the money.

It's a lot more fun to watch other companies leech off your work and your $HUGE_DOLLAR_SUM worth of R&D go down the drain. The point of reasonable patents was so there was a financial incentive for innovation and research. I believe a 5 year patent is more than enough time to recoup R&D costs and make a fair profit, after which time the research/knowledge can fall into the public domain.

Re:Conversely

[TooMuchToDo]

Like with open source software or the "free" internet, the money will come from somewhere. Advances will continue. Will advances be as fast without contriving bizarre ownership rules? I don't know. I'd rather come out of this with common sense intact rather than more rapid advances, though.

Until someone close to you or you care about is dying from something that could have been cured/treated if advances were faster. I believe the current patent system is broken, but I also think that there is a fair amount of time for innovation to fall under a patent (i.e. 5 years). If someone wants to argue that the public good is more important for a specific cure/treatment, have the government pay the innovators a fair price to acquire the research/information for the public domain.

Re:Conversely

[Golddess]

Just playing Devil's Advocate, but as I understand it, they are at least creating the genes, as opposed to pointing to a pre-existing gene and saying "that's mine. If you want to use it, you gotta pay me".

Re:Conversely

[sjames]

My point is that lack of patents will not necessarily halt discovery. That, in fact, lack of patents AND lack of even the potential to turn a profit EVER has not stopped an even more difficult and expensive search.

I propose that we cease our never-ending war on drugs, quit policing the world, and drop our silly security theater in airports and plow the billions we spend there into medical research.

Re:Conversely

[Fred_A]

LOL at the moderation from somebody who obviously knows absolutely nothing about the industry. :)

Re:Conversely

[Simon80]

It's much harder to support the use of the word most than it is to assert that plenty of research involves the use of public funding (it is hard to refute that there is a lot of publicly funded research going on). Innovations that result from publicly funded research should be publicly available, rather than being patentable by the individual that did the research, in the same way that many employers claim ownership to ideas that were the result of a person's employment by said employer. If the public pays you to do research, the public should not have to pay you again with a 2 decade monopoly on the result.

Re:Conversely

[mgbastard]

I propose that we cease our never-ending war on drugs, quit policing the world, and drop our silly security theater in airports and plow the billions we spend there into medical research.

Meh. Enough already with the medical research. There's plenty of market incentive there as it is. Let's spend it on physics research, where globalization has really cut back massively on research dollars by private firms.

Re:Conversely

[Vesvvi]

I have a bad feeling that this ruling will just shift the focus of patents, without changing their effective targets.

If a kit for diagnosis etc can be patented, the net result is unchanged: the knowledge remains locked-down under the control of the patent-holder. While this wouldn't be a huge problem if the generation of a detection kit was a novel work worthy of protection, the reality is that genetics as a field is a rigorously predictable, formulaic, and mathematical study.

The techniques for working with genetics are very well-understood, and it will likely be a computer algorithm (and not a new one) that designs the tools (DNA primers etc) for performing a particular diagnostic test. Why should that be patentable? At best, it certainly isn't non-obvious, and I would argue that when a machine (which you didn't invent) is designing your invention, you certainly shouldn't be able to claim it as your own!

Of course, there should be room for patenting truly new genetic tools, such as a new type of DNA-binding fluorescent probe, but such inventions come around once or twice a year. The hundreds or thousands of unique gene-detection methods developed per year which use that new tool should not be patentable.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

But you don't need to research the function of the gene to develop a patentable treatment, so long as you know the guy down the street is going to research the function and let everyone know.

Well, that depends on who the guy down the street is. Unless he is not developing commercial products (say, a university lab working on a basic research grant), there may be no reason for them to publish the information on the gene until they've also completed development on at least one commercializable piece of work based on that information, so by waiting for them to develop and publish the basic information, you've left yourself way behind in developing any commercial application.

Re:Conversely

[DragonWriter]

+5 insightful for listing the better model.

Anybody?

A mixed economy that recognizes that markets work well when both the benefits and the costs of an exchange are realized by the people deciding to make the exchange, but that decisions that involve large externalities require collective social action, usually through government, to internalize the externalities.

There's a reason that systems that even approximate pure capitalism are pretty hard to find, and every developed modern economy is a mixed economy with considerable areas of government involvement in the economy, and that among those developed economies, those that have the highest level of apparent realized utility (=popular satisfaction) tend to be on the higher end of the government involvement spectrum, even if they don't perform as well in the aggregeate performance measures that would seem most relevant from a capitalist perspective. (GDP/capita, etc.)

Can I have my +5 now?

Re:Conversely

[Vesvvi]

Citation needed? I don't have any hard numbers in front on me, but I cannot imagine that the government is just an intermediary between pharma and the researchers.

Re:Conversely

[AK Marc]

Unlike copyrights, patents only last 20 years.

He was saying that because it can't be patented that no one would develop against it. And non-patents last forever.

Re:Conversely

[mcgrew]

You'll have more affordable cures for the first 20 years but after that the prices will be the same

Exactly wrong. You'll have expensive cures for the first 20 years and after the patent expires the prices will be dirt cheap. Take Paxil for example -- its patent ran out while I was taking it, and my co-pay dropped from $20 a bottle to $4 for a generic. Of course, the doctor changed the prescription to a time-release version which was still under patent, and didn't work as well (I had her change it back quickly).

A CrystaLens eye implant is ~$1500 more than a standard monofocal IOL purely because only one company is allowed to make them. When its patent runs out, monofocal IOLs will go the way of the buggy whip.

Just because we hate patents

Few of us hate patents. What we hate is unreasonable patents, like patenting the obvious, patenting prior art, patenting something "on the computer" that is commmon in meatspace, and patenting nature. Were it not for patents, I'd have to use reading glasses because the CrystaLens probably wouldn't have been developed.

Re:Conversely

[Burdell]

Isolating and identifying a gene (or particle, or planet) is not innovation. Using that knowledge to do something else is. Nobody is forcing them to publish the information as soon as they find it.

Re:Conversely

[laughingcoyote]

Well, I won't claim I know the entire answer. Nor do I need to, to know there is a question.

Laissez-faire capitalism does work in some ways, but it also has a significant number of flaws (look up "Gilded Age"). Its polar opposite, a totally nationalized economy, also turned out to be fatally flawed.

So, for now, why don't we look at building a society like building anything? You need more than one tool in the toolbox. Some things might work best totally nationalized, some might work best largely unregulated, most will fall somewhere in between. Some things might need totally novel solutions that we've not even come up with yet.

Absolute laissez-faire capitalism and totally nationalized communism actually shared the same flaw. They tried to treat everything in the same way, when not all of them are the same thing. Why not try treating the two as a spectrum, and treating different areas as though they're, well, different?

Realistically, it's been done for a while. Some things, like police and fire protection, are effectively totally nationalized. Other things, such as luxury goods, have little regulation or price control beyond basic consumer-protection law. Yet others, like utilities (generally private but heavily regulated), fall somewhere in between.

History has already shown that doing everything one way or the other will fail, so why not learn that lesson, avoid that mistake, and spend our time and resources deciding what should be where along that spectrum? The world's most successful and stable societies and economies are hybrids of this nature.

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Purpose? The patent itself is an assumption of ownership and an expectation of compliance with the assumption! Screw that! I don't comply! You want to "own" a piece of me? I got a piece for you too! Comply with my assumption of ownership of your butt and I might comply with your assumption of ownership of my butt. Otherwise, bugger off!

Re:Conversely

[mweather]

If there weren't more licensees than licensors, there would be no economic incentive to patent a gene, except to cross-license your patents. If that's the case, then ending gene patents won't negatively affect anyone at all, they'd just stop cross-licensing.

Re:Conversely

[holmstar]

Similarly, you can get a patent for an isolated DNA molecule that nobody has isolated before. But *not* on DNA in its naturally occuring state.

You can get a patent on a method to isolate said DNA molecule, but you did not invent that DNA, thus the DNA itself should not be patentable. The DNA existed already, you just discovered it.

Well of course its invalid...

[paper tape]

Well of course its invalid...

God could claim Prior Art.

;)

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[JustShootMe]

but then he'd have to provide an address for service, and there goes Christianity.

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Dr Herbert West]

well, all I have to say is, "thank f**kin God" for our non-patentable genes...

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Cryacin]

Come on, if God was such a freaking fantastic engineer, why the hell did he put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational zone?

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! New Jersey was created by the British, not God!

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, if God was such a freaking fantastic engineer, why the hell did he put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational zone?

I'm hearing lots of complaints, but no _suggestions_.

G.

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only conclusion I can draw is that God intentionally intended that to be part of the recreational zone (not sure what the stance of most churches is on that though).

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[value_added]

Come on, if God was such a freaking fantastic engineer, why the hell did he put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational zone?

A recent (non-scientific) sampling I made of the cultural practices depicted in a certain category of popular films would suggest that for many, both are recreational and the placement is considered a feature. Then, of course, there's the Germans.

As for the article, if you think patenting genes is outrageous, consider the patenting of turmeric.

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because some of us like to play around in the dirt...

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[wiredlogic]

Mammals with external gonads are a major design flaw too. He only got it right with the cetaceans and a few others. Must have been enumerating the narcotics on that day and sampling his work.

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[roman_mir]

twice the fun?

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anci3nt of Days]

Some claim he left a power of attorney:

God, c/o His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
VATICAN CITY

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[mqduck]

Efficiency?

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[martin-boundary]

Come on, if God was such a freaking fantastic engineer, why the hell did he put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational zone?

As a Christian, you're not supposed to know about that!

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anonymous Coward]

God loves gays :o

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the sewage outlet is dual-use.

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[PixetaledPikachu]

Come on, if God was such a freaking fantastic engineer, why the hell did he put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational zone?

God got drunk occasionally. I mean, have you seen platypus?

Re:Well of course its invalid...

[mcgrew]

God only knows why, I certainly can't fathom it. But I have to admit that someone who could design and build an entire universe just may have some reasons that are beyond my comprehension, or even imagination.

sigh..

[JustShootMe]

It'll be overturned on appeal.

About time they got their hands out of my genes!

[pecosdave]

Seriously, all this groping around in my genes and telling me that they owned anything they found. Fucking lawyers.

Monsanto

[Anarki2004]

I would like to see something similar happen to Monsanto's patents.

Re:Monsanto

[Manfre]

Sadly, not going to happen. Monsanto's will hold up a lot better because their patented material was created through selective breeding.

Re:Monsanto

[Bruha]

I think it should be illegal though. If you have a farm next door to a patented crop, bees cross polinate, and then monsanto is knocking on your door.

In essence their patent is viral in nature.

Re:Monsanto

[ImNotAtWork]

Monsanto is a culprit but the issue much larger than just this one company. We need to help governments pull their collective heads out of their collective you know whats. This link sums up a lot of the impacts that can be seen and forecast due to various Countries' Seed Acts. http://www.zcommunications.org/the-indian-seed-act-and-patent-act-by-vandana2-shiva

Re:Monsanto

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you should argue that the laws include provisions for the protection of farmers from cross-pollination leading to innocent infringement.

Re:Monsanto

[shutdown -p now]

There is no "innocent infringement" there because there is no infringement, period. Any other notion is simply criminally insane.

Re:Monsanto

[sweatyboatman]

fine, but wouldn't that make the patent for the method of selective breeding that led to their GM plants?

claiming to have a patent on the process of pollination is a bit much, IMHO.

Re:Monsanto

[zappepcs]

Yes, and Monsanto employees and representatives should attempt to avoid walking on the target range of farmers accused of innocent infringement, though I think it would improve the world if they couldn't help themselves but to sit on target ranges more often. Our very own former Vice President set a precedent for the accidental shooting of people in hunting parties and on target ranges. In case the FBI is listening, I'm not advocating that people shoot at Monsanto employees and lawyers. Indeed, I think those people should shoot themselves and save us the misery they cause. I just think it would be more convenient if more farmers had their own shooting ranges.

Re:Monsanto

[BitZtream]

Great, GPL has infected something else.

Re:Monsanto

[BitZtream]

What you wrote was an opinion.

You can say 'there is no infringement' but you don't decide that, the law/a judge does. Period. Any other notion is simply utterly disconnected from reality.

I'm glad and all...

[JorDan Clock]

But I'm kind of upset that we live in a society that we have to tell someone "No, you cannot have exclusive rights to a natural occurrence." Worse yet, this "patent" prevented anyone from even looking at the gene, whether it was for diagnostic or research purposes.

Re:I'm glad and all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the human capacity for greed. Never.

Study even a small portion of history, or hell, look at the news for a week, and you'll become disgusted at what the monetary concept will provoke.

Thus ends the Introduction to humanity!

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[JustShootMe]

Yeah. that's not lawyers! That's a wife!

Natural Resource

[LightPhoenix7]

You can't patent coal, or wood, so why should you be able to patent a natural resource like DNA? If they create something new from it, like a new allele or treatment, I'd say that's fair game. In the end, this is an extremely important ruling, but unfortunately it's probably not the end. It will probably require the Supreme Court to make a ruling. I don't see anyone involved giving up that easily.

Re:Natural Resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a patent on a natural resource, but patent number 5443036 should give you an idea about what our system grants patents for.

Abstract:

A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a handheld laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct

Re:Natural Resource

[robbyjo]

Even for a new allele, say a SNP, its combination is only A, C, T, or G. Unless they can show that it is highly unlikely that the patented modification would occur naturally, any new alleles should be patent free. And heck, they can't compare the chance with pure random chance since we know that mutations / gene modifications do not occur randomly either. Claiming so would be very hard.

New treatment may or may not be patentable as well. If the treatment involves a naturally occurring sequence from other people (I'm thinking of siRNA and the likes), they can't patent the sequence either. They can only patent the method to synthesize it. Even then, if the method is in fact a naturally occurring method (i.e., that's how the body of human or other creatures does it), then they can't patent it either.

Re:Natural Resource

[QuantumG]

Who modded this up? There's a real conversation to be had here, and stupid analogies don't help.

The issue is: drugs have to go through expensive clinical trials before they are legal to be sold. Currently, drug companies pay for these trials because they are guaranteed exclusivity over the manufacturer of the drug should it turn out to be viable. Gene patents are an extension of this process, they give exclusivity to the drug company to develop the drug to target the gene. Without them, gene research is unlikely to lead to drugs to treat disease.

Re:Natural Resource

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need to patent coal or wood, if I have a deed to the property it's on that gives me the rights to it, or some other agreement that gives me ownership, then I own it, and if somebody takes it, I can go to the cops and have them arrested.

Re:Natural Resource

[Taevin]

Right, because since histamine receptors are not exclusive to a single drug company, there is an absolute dearth of histamine blockers on the market.

Allow only 10 patents per year

[kaltkalt]

The abuse of the patent system is beyond repair. I say we completely overhaul the entire system and only grant 10 patents per year. There are not even 10 things that are patent-worthy invented in an average year. Not anymore. Combining a cellphone and a pen is not unique and nonobvious and should not be patentable. Give the 10 best, truly innovative inventions one of ten patents after an exhaustive review at the end of the year. No genetic patents, no "business method" patents. Only truly novel inventions should be patentable. Frankly I can't think of the last invention that I've seen that is worthy of a patent. 10 per year is still allowing at least 5 crap things to get an unfair monopoly that is completely undeserved.

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[techno-vampire]

No genetic patents, no "business method" patents.

I think your basic idea goes too far, but in this, at least, I agree. All business patents should be thrown out on the grounds that patents were never intended to protect ideas, just concrete applications of them. And, on the grounds that patent law originally specified that methods in and of themselves were not patentable, out go the software patents along with the rest. Do that, and most of the mess clears itself up.

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[robot256]

But then all the lawyers would resubmit millions of applications every year. You also have to limit the number of submissions per inventor or apply a tiered pricing program (first three applications cost $200 each, next 10 cost $10,000 each, after that $30,000 each). That way small inventors could compete with large corporations without totally swamping the system.

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[FiloEleven]

Yes! And there should be several rounds of competition and public voting! The competitors must complete several challenges during each round, such as digging for prior art to disqualify their rivals and giving speeches to defend their claim to the Top 10. The whole thing should be shown on C-SPAN and hosted by a three-judge panel: a patent lawyer, an inventor, and Paula Abdul.

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[Cryacin]

You left out the death match.

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[epoxide]

furthermore, applying the rule of "you can't patent an algorithm" would rule out patents on genetic tests. The technology necessary for doing the sequencing or other identification (SNP, etc) has been in the public domain for years. The patents really only cover using that public domain tech to generate data and then checking the data against a database of alleles known to have medical implications - i.e., an algorithm.

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[Shrike82]

How ironic that you're modded Troll and he's modded Insightful, when clearly it should be the other way around...

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[Theaetetus]

And, on the grounds that patent law originally specified that methods in and of themselves were not patentable

35 U.S.C. 101: "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."

Methods are totally patentable, provided they do something useful. You're thinking "abstract algorithms."

Re:Allow only 10 patents per year

[techno-vampire]

Methods are totally patentable, provided they do something useful. You're thinking "abstract algorithms."

Thank you. I sit corrected.

What's all this bunk about patent genes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in my day, genes were supposed to help give you the rugged looks of a cowboy or an outdoorsman, not of a greasy 19-year old kid on the make at the disco with his obnoxious friends. Patent genes! What will they think of next!!

(after whispered exchange)

Ohhhhh. Um. Never mind!

I don't get it !

[Taco Cowboy]

I don't get it !

If they can patent the way I work (while listening to music), why can't I patent my own genes?

Double standards??

Re:I don't get it !

[Jurily]

Prior art.

Re:I don't get it !

[Shikaku]

Yep. There was a lot of prior art in your mother before you were born I bet too.

Re:I don't get it !

[davester666]

So, you're saying he's a clone?

Re:I don't get it !

[Sparx139]

Short answer?

The patent system is fucked up.

Re:I don't get it !

[Anci3nt of Days]

Prior art.

I'm sure there is an intelligent design troll to be found here somewhere.

... or at least an intelligent troll designing something.

Re:I don't get it !

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Why is this modded a troll? He's right, and what's more, he's not even saying anything remotely inflammatory.

Or did I just miss a subtle Yo Mamma joke (contradictory terms as they may be)?

Re:I don't get it !

[Shikaku]

They are jealous of my perfect your mom joke: it's true, it's not an insult, it's funny, and it actually makes sense.

Re:I don't get it !

[Bakkster]

It's even better because you didn't try to force the joke. Like saying that your dad's prior art ended your mom's Red Period.

Re:I don't get it !

[cthulu_mt]

Someone has to write the coporaphagia copy/pasta!

Support our Trolls.
Keep our spammers flying!

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[Cryacin]

Generally once they become wives, the groping ceases. Mind you, they still lay claim!

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[pecosdave]

I keep my valuables in my genes.

They're both after the same thing either way.

Discovery, not Invention

[BlueBoxSW.com]

See the difference?

Oh, Thank Gawd....

[undecim]

I was worried about getting sued by one of those patent holders. As much as I copy these genes, they could have sued me for all the money in the world.

kwod joack

[Anonymous Coward]

MY mother was the governor of Alaska, you insensitive clod!!!

Is this what we want?

[rhadc]

This might be a good target for sarcastic comments, but I wonder if there isn't a more worthwhile line of thinking.

Do we put folks into prison to protect those who are outside, or is it merely punitive? Knowing that many are going to come out at some point, doesn't it make sense to prepare the convicted for living a normal life? The story seems to highlight the question for me of whether we would rather "punish" or "correct" those whose trajectories seem to favor harm to society. What do you say to a person who chooses the side that, despite the hardships that come with it, is the one he understands?

Re:Is this what we want?

[Caraig]

The glib answer I'm about to give makes it seem clear-cut, but it really isn't.

Punitive sentences for the unrepentant, rehabilitative for those who are misguided or simply mentally ill.

The problem is, how do you tell when a convict is one or the other? Quasifunctional sociopaths are accomplished, convincing liars (they even convince themselves, sometimes) and could act like they're all cured. The mentally ill, once rehabilitated, might be overwhelmed by guilt and retreat into the 'easy' path of seeking punitative sentencing. There are a lot of other combinations that can lead to false negatives or false positives.

Besides, right now, most "justice" and "corrections" systems are not set up to be rehabilitative. I don't even think modern psychiatry and psychology knows *how* to reliably rehabilitate most sorts of criminals; it strikes me as a complex problem requiring a multidisciplinary solution that we as a culture are not capable of solving right now.

And, heaven help me, I'm the sort of person who thinks Robert Fuld got off too easy with just being cold-cocked. :(

prior art:

[circletimessquare]

mother fucking nature

greedy douchebags

Don't forget GMOs

[JumboMessiah]

Gene patents are also big in the agriculture industry. And they actively sue to keep it that way.

Re:Don't forget GMOs

[QuantumG]

They actually *invent* that products, so there's no precedent here.

Re:Don't forget GMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's different... There are basically 3 types of patents.. Business patents, Plant patents, and I happen to forget the 3rd now. A plant patent is valid IIRC for 20 years, and it covers the creation of a new plant. IE> If you were to cross-bread a red rose with a yellow tulip and created a new type of plant (an orange tuse? rolip?) you could patent the resulting plant for the time period a Plant patent covers. If you developed a fungus resistant version of a plant, and a fungus resistant version doesn't already exist in nature or already covered under a patent, you can patent it under the Plant patent as it's a new breed of plant. That's how the patents work.

Gene Patents Don't Interfere With Research

[Grond]

Hopefully this will go a long way in ensuring that patents on genes do not stand in the way of research.

If you look at the empirical data, gene patents don't interfere with research. In a survey of 414 biomedical researchers at universities, government, and nonprofit institutions, none of the 381 respondents reported abandoning a line of research due to patents and only five delayed completion of an experiment for more than one month. Only one respondent reported paying for access to research materials covered by a patent and the fee was under $100. The paper concluded that "access to patents on knowledge inputs rarely imposes a significant burden on academic biomedical research." John P. Walsh, et al, "View from the Bench: Patents and Material Transfers," 309 Science 2002 (September 2005).

Re:Gene Patents Don't Interfere With Research

[Chris Burke]

So gene patents are both ethically wrong since they're patenting a discovery instead of an invention, and useless for the patent holder as well. Good to know.

Does Myriad really "own" the gene?

[El Fantasmo]

Some one correct me if I'm wrong... Doesn't Myriad Genetics have a patent on a method for testing or gene manipulation or something of that sort, NOT the gene itself?

Re:Does Myriad really "own" the gene?

[sir_eccles]

Both, which is sort of what the whole case was about. Just looking at 5747282 for example, the majority of the claims are for a specified sequence, then look at claim 20:

20. A method for screening potential cancer therapeutics which comprises: growing a transformed eukaryotic host cell containing an altered BRCA1 gene causing cancer in the presence of a compound suspected of being a cancer therapeutic, growing said transformed eukaryotic host cell in the absence of said compound, determining the rate of growth of said host cell in the presence of said compound and the rate of growth of said host cell in the absence of said compound and comparing the growth rate of said host cells, wherein a slower rate of growth of said host cell in the presence of said compound is indicative of a cancer therapeutic.

I'm still reading the judgement (156 pages) but the impression I get is that the whole lot is invalid because page 136 onwards says so.

The US Supreme Court ruling

[pearl298]

The US Supreme Court ruling used the term "anything under the sun that is made by man".

The essence of this lawsuit is that the natural genes were "discovered" not "made by man".

In other words these patents were invalid under existing law. Nothing new here, bad patents have been around since King James (the gay King of England and Scotland).

Re:The US Supreme Court ruling

[robot256]

They were not made by man. They were made by woman (a.k.a. your mom).

Re:The US Supreme Court ruling

[Anonymous Coward]

The King James of the King James Bible

Re:The US Supreme Court ruling

[FiloEleven]

Hmm, so if I'm a Platonist, then...everything already exists in Forms, thus everything is discovered, never invented, thus...no patents?

Re:The US Supreme Court ruling

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that would include human genes, wouldn't it? You are aware of how humans are made, aren't you? ;D

Re:The US Supreme Court ruling

[pearl298]

The King James of England and Scotland who paid for the "King James" bible to be translated, and for the first Anglican "Book of Common Prayer" (an attempt to find "common ground" between protestants and Catholics!) He did a lot and caused a huge controversy - like appointing his lover as Archbishop of Canterbury! All in all one of the most interesting Kings of British history.

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[M4DP4RROT]

Now we just have to figure a way to stop them from groping around in my jeans and taking whatever they find, and we're set.

An almost insignificant start

[RobinEggs]

Well, I suppose it's nice that someone finally ruled you can't patent the genetic code itself, but the net change will be practically nothing.

If they can still patent every single technique and tool involved in examining, testing, or isolating the gene then who gives a crap if they pretend they own the code? We'll still end up reinventing the wheel every time we'd like to look at any known gene; either that or we'll pay thousands of dollars in patent fees per procedure. I suppose it's nice that some district court judge finally made the biggest No Flipping Duh ruling of the genetic age, but I think it changes very little in practical terms.

Patent pending

[mirix]

I'm still waiting on my patent on fire to go through.

thank God

[Charliemopps]

finally someone gets it right. There is no part of the patent system for offensive than gene patents.

Henrietta Lacks

[blaster151]

It was so surreal to see this as the most recent headline on Slashdot - two minutes before, I'd finished listening to the audio version of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which touches on issues surrounding genetic research and the unfortunate incursion of capitalism into tissue storage and research. The book itself is a fascinating mix of science and history, but the Afterword is all about the commercialism of genetic research and the obstacles it's introducing to scientific progress. Who owns human tissues and the research advances that come from them: the patients, the researchers, or the scientific community and the world? More information about the book can be found here: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I was dismayed to learn that it would cost millions to test one individual for all known genetic diseases, not because of inherent costs of the technology but because of all the patents and licensing fees. I hope that today's positive ruling cascades in positive ways to other realms of gene patenting and unthrottles scientific progress.

Chakrabarty case

[Beerdood]

This ruling reminds me of a segment I saw in a documentary ( the corporation - scroll down for quote). It always shocked me that something like a gene or life form could be patented simply by discovering it. You didn't invent it, why should you own the rights to it? If you create a brand new gene then you should you be able to profit for it, but for a gene that already exists? It may seem a bit off topic, but this is case is what paved the way for gene patenting - the ability to patent anything biological (save for a full human). I hope this case paves the way to new patent laws on biology.

The Chakrabarty case is one of the great judicial moments in world history. And the public was totally unaware it was actually happening as a process was being engaged. General Electric and Professor Chakrabarty went to the patent office with a little microbe that eats up oil spills. They said they had modified this microbe in the laboratory, and therefore it was an invention. The patent office and the U.S. Government took at look at this "invention"; they said, 'No way. The patent statutes don't cover living things. This is not an invention". Turned down. Then, General Electric and Doctor Chakrabarty appealed to the U.S. Customs Court of Appeal. And, to everyone's surprise, by a 3-to-2 decision, they overrode the patent office. They said, 'This microbe looks more like a detergent, or a reagent, than a horse or a honeybee". I laugh because they didn't understand basic biology; it looked like a chemical to them. Had it had an antenna, or eyes, or wings, or legs, it would never have crossed their table and been patented. Then the patent office appealed. And what the public should realize now is the patent office was very clear that you can't patent life. My organization provided the main amicus curiae brief. "If you allow the patent on this microbe," we argued, "it means that without any congressional guidance or public discussion, corporations will own the blueprints of life". When they made the decision, we lost by 5-to-4, and Chief Justice Warren Berger said, "Sure, some of these are big issues but we think this is a small decision". 7 Years later the U.S. Patent Office issued a 1 sentence decree, "You can patent anything in the world that's alive, except a full-birth human being". We've all been hearing about the announcement that we have mapped the human genome. But what the public doesn't know is now there's this great race by genomic companies and biotech companies and life science companies to find the treasure in the map. The treasure are the individual genes that make up the blueprint of the human race. Every time they capture a gene and isolate it, these biotech companies claim it as intellectual property. The breast cancer gene, the cystic fibrosis gene, it goes on and on and on. If this goes unchallenged in the world community within less than 10 years a handful of global companies will own, directly, or through license, the actual genes that make up the evolution of our species. And they're now beginning to patent the genomes of every other creature on this planet. In the age of biology the politics is going to sort out between those who believe life first has intrinsic value, and therefore we should choose technologies and commercial venues that honor the intrinsic value. And then we're going to have people who believe, "Look, life is a simple utility, it's commercial fare", and they will line up with the idea to let the marketplace be the ultimate arbiter of all of the age of biology.

Re:Chakrabarty case

[Theaetetus]

This ruling reminds me of a segment I saw in a documentary ( the corporation - scroll down for quote). It always shocked me that something like a gene or life form could be patented simply by discovering it. You didn't invent it, why should you own the rights to it?

Just so you know, Chakrabarty did invent a new life form, and this opinion even cites the Chakrabarty case approvingly. The distinction would be that here, the gene already exists in nature.
The new issue in this case is whether the isolated gene is patentable when only the non-isolated gene exists in nature. Previously, that answer had been yes, but this opinion says no.

When are patents ever good?

[KarlIsNotMyName]

Patents can take a long walk off a short evolutionary path.

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[sweatyboatman]

It's unclear to me why the lawyers are the ones you blame and not, say, the executives at Myriad. Or the Congress men and women who worship at the feet of the IP industry.

Let me play Devil's advocate.

[plopez]

Patents, even of genes, may not be a bad thing. Here's the point of patents: you have to reveal how it works. Why? to advance the state of the science. Not to create a monopoly, but rather to prevent them. I know this is counter intuitive. But it creates a a situation where the next research group can come along, study the patent and then say "Aha! Now we know the next step to take". And as long as they can show a substantial improvement, they can patent their work as well, even *before* the previous patent expires.

The alternative is to lock information away as a trade secret.

What many people don't realize is that patents are written directly into the Constitution of the US. See Article I, Section 8. That is how important they were to the drafters of the document.

My .10 USD.

Re:Let me play Devil's advocate.

[Sparx139]

That might work in your perfect world. But you're forgetting something:

This.
Is.
Earth.

And does anybody want to see this sort of thing in the hands of a patent troll? I'd rather not that risk.

Also, this isn't an invention - they can't "reveal how it works", in your words. If that was the case, they'd be patenting breast cancer instead of the genes that cause it.

Re:Let me play Devil's advocate.

[BitZtream]

I realize that slashdot has just learned about them in the past 10 years or so but let me enlighten you about a little fact that everyone down here on Earth who has ever been involved with patents already knows ....

PATENT TROLLS AREN'T NEW.

They haven't actually been a real issue ever. Just because you've noticed through a news aggregator ran buy a bunch of people who think 'information WANTS to be free' and shows every 'patent troll' on the planet doesn't mean its really that big of a problem.

They have to 'reveal how it works' or more importantly, they have to describe what they want patented, if you don't describe it in the patent it isn't patented. So ... for all practical purposes the important part of the discover will be in the patent as the inventors want it protected. You can argue semantics, but that just makes you a tool and your point irrelevant since ... down here on Earth ... how it actually works and practicality are the law, not whatever theory some professor told you in class last week.

Before you start telling us how it is on Earth, you might actually want to come visit first. Its a real shame you can't be rational.

Re:Let me play Devil's advocate.

[Sparx139]

I support patents and copyright. They are necessary to get innovations out into the world. The point I was trying to make is that no matter how well intentioned the system is, it screws up because people exploit it; this sort of thing can be counterproductive. If a corporation (read: bastard) decides to sit on a patent and make people pay through the nose to use it, rather than actually do something with it, it's a terrible waste. Now, when we're talking about genes that cause breast cancer, something that could be built off to cause a cure, then it's doubly offensive.

Before you start telling us how it is on Earth, you might actually want to come visit first. Its a real shame you can't be rational.

Perhaps if you were to provide some sort of link, I might be rational. I know, hypocritical coming from the guy who didn't, but I wasn't outright calling someone wrong. I was just saying that while it sounds good in theory, it doesn't work in the real world.

Re:Let me play Devil's advocate.

[Tanuki64]

Here's the point of patents: you have to reveal how it works.

Just forget it. I have some experience with patents. Even helped writing an application. The usual way to do it is to omit important parts and tweak some parameters so that it is not too obvious, but makes it almost useless for 3rd parties.

Photographs

[zlel]

It occurred to me that capturing genetic code as a database is somewhat (albeit remotely) like taking a photograph of something that already exists in nature. If patents are there to protect invention (ie, to encourage invention by making it profitable), why is literary work not patentable? If a sci-fi writer invents a new scientific concept and builds a story around it, he may be able to patent that scientific concept, but there's nothing to stop other writers from stealing his invention in writing, is there? At the end of the day, I still don't see why software isn't "literary work".

you're using your numbers wrong

[sweatyboatman]

Only one respondent reported paying for access to research materials covered by a patent

sounds to me like 1 out of 381 research labs were using patented genes. either the patented genes aren't all that interesting (possible) or the researchers are actively choosing not to research those genes to avoid the patent issues.

slow down there!

[sweatyboatman]

I'm pretty sure this case isn't all that far reaching.

Certainly the treatment, even if its naturally occurring, would still be patentable. Sure, they wouldn't likely be able to win a lawsuit against a guy whose body was producing their treatment (ala Monsanto), but they could definitely win against another pharma producing and selling their patented treatment in vats. Which is what they want the patent for anyways.

The allele thing is probably similar. They could still patent the assembly of the pieces in a particular order for the purposes of making medicine. And that would probably hold up just fine even after this ruling.

Basically every abstraction away from genes would need its own ruling.

that's not really how the case worked

[YesIAmAScript]

It would be one thing if the farmer were complaining he couldn't sell his crop because it was contaminated. Instead he was found to be using the features of the Monsanto crop (Roundup resistance).

If the crop just blew over and he still grew it as normal it'd be one thing, but instead he knew it was genetically modified and he was using that feature of it to make his growing easier.

Re:that's not really how the case worked

[throughwithit]

He may have known it was modified, but the Canadian Supreme Court also found that he never actually used RoundUp on the crop of interest to the court case.

Re:that's not really how the case worked

[Anonymous Coward]

If the crop just blew over and he still grew it as normal it'd be one thing, but instead he knew it was genetically modified and he was using that feature of it to make his growing easier.

So what? The farmer has to adapt his technique to the characteristics of his crops, otherwise he'd be incompetent. You don't grow rice in the same way you would grow barley. Once the crop is contaminated, it's a given that you adapt to the contamination, whatever it is.

Re:that's not really how the case worked

[Anonymous Coward]

but instead he knew it was genetically modified and he was using that feature of it to make his growing easier.

And after trying to take advantage of them (almost all of his field was intentionally Round-Up Ready canola), now that he has become an anti-biotech folk hero, he now goes around telling people how bad GMOs are and how they violated him. How principled of him.

Was it right? On one hand, what he was doing was clearly intentional, and these artificial gene insertions should have some sort of protection. On the other hand, it was still his seed (if it really was his seed). But it is true that he could have used any other seed and avoided this rather than capitalizing on it like he did. I don't think anyone should be able to sue for cross-pollination any more than I should be able to sue you if my Cherokee Purple tomato seeds are hybridized by your Ananas Noire and is no longer a stable line or if my Charentais melon seeds are 'contaminated' by your d'Alger melon, and it seems he successfully got money from Monsanto over the whole contamination thing, despite him using it to his advantage.

Re:that's not really how the case worked

[Anonymous Coward]

1. you are wrong: it WAS because HIS OWN STRAINS of canola he had been developing for YEARS were contaminated by monsanto (IF ANYTHING, HE should have a case against THEM, and -in fact- *DID* win a minor aspect of the case which monsanto settled after the main case...)...
2. the rapacious monsanto managed to convince/convict otherwise because they are the 800 pound gorilla *AND* the establishment of these unreasonable 'patents on life', etc...
3. roundup-ready crap does NOT result in significantly better yields, BUT DOES result in significantly better profits for monsanto when they -along with the bankers who require big agri practices to get loans- essentially force farmers to pay for seed (no seed saving ! monsanto don't care that's what farmers have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years: THEY OWN THE SEEDS, thief!), pay for fertilizer, pay for roundup, and pay for less yields for more money...
4. REGARDLESS of the 'law', it is an immoral and inhumane practice... (as andrew young said: the law is what 100 businessmen say it is...)

Re:that's not really how the case worked

[Bruha]

You can not sue someone else, you have to sue the bees.

Facs, Monsanto's gene is viral, if I get the genes in my crop, it's not my fault, and now suddenly I'm responsible to pay monsanto and I have to quit saving my seeds which might mean the difference between a good profit or a loss.

I'm sure monsanto knows very well before they even offered it for sale, that their gene would get transferred in this way. If people want to do gene patents on farm crop, they should also splice in a gene that requires the plant to be fed some chemical so that it dies if it does not get it. Yeah I'm aware of the dinosaur movie..

I'm sure the RIAA would love viral music that infected everyone's computers and they could then sue anyone who had it.

Re:that's not really how the case worked

[S77IM]

To my way of thinking, Monsanto gave him their patented technology by allowing it to float around pollinating his crop. Genes spread -- everybody knows this, especially biotech companies. If a Monsanto-owned organism escapes its controlled environment, they better be prepared to pay for all the clean-up (like replacing that guy's contaminated wheat), or else give up their rights to it.

  -- 77IM

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are the morons that modded the parent OT?!? Freaking hillarious!

This will lower medical costs

[guyminuslife]

I mean, who wants to have to pay royalties whenever they get cancer? ;-)

Ahhhhh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be overturned in 3, 2, 1...

They didn't strike down a gene patent

[epoxide]

Myriad found alleles (mutations) associated with a higher risk of breast cancer, and then patented a medical test to detect those alleles. If you patented a breathalyzer, would you call it a patent on alcohol?

Re:They didn't strike down a gene patent

[Beezlebub33]

If you patented a breathalyzer, would you call it a patent on alcohol?

No, but if the patent was written such that any test that detected alcohol would violate the patent, then it would be a patent on alcohol. That's my understanding of Myriad's patent and assertions about it. There is simply no way to create another test for BRCA2-based cancer that does not violate the patent, using any method. That's why the patent is broken and should be thrown out.

FTFA: "The patents granted to Myriad give the company the exclusive right to perform diagnostic tests on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and to prevent any researcher from even looking at the genes without first getting permission from Myriad."

That's operationally a patent on the genes, and in your analogy, it would be essentially a patent on alcohol testing of any kind.

Re:They didn't strike down a gene patent

[Anonymous Coward]

There is simply no way to create another test for BRCA2-based cancer that does not violate the patent, using any method. That's why the patent is broken and should be thrown out.

Which is also my argument against software patents. The ones I've read cover something like an astronomical number of implementations. As I read the claims I like to count off the multipliers, saying "5 times 3 times 2 time 3 times . . ." Eventually there is no other way to solve the same trivial problem, because every possible way has been patented.

if you take the money out of marketing

[epoxide]

you sell less drugs, and there's less money for R&D. Pharma doesn't spend money on marketing unless it generates more revenue than it costs: they have the guys with calculators to figure that out. Spending money on buying back shares, private jets, or buying out Sirtris: yeah, that hurts R&D. Marketing the drugs to people who shouldn't be taking them (Vioxx) and then losing 3x as much in the inevitable lawsuits: yeah, that hurts R&D. Someone did a study a while back, and found that the biggest effect that direct to consumer advertising of drugs had on sales wasn't to get people to bug their doctors to write them a scrip, it was in reminding people to refill the prescriptions they already had.

Re:if you take the money out of marketing

[afidel]

And I'm sure the person(s) doing that study had NO connection or expected future connection to the pharmaceutical industry.... Oh and the goal shouldn't be to sell more drugs, it should be to do the maximum amount of good with the available resources. I'm sure a robocaller reminding people to pickup their already refilled prescription would be a hell of a lot cheaper than the marketing arm of big pharma.

Re:if you take the money out of marketing

[epoxide]

If they used a robocaller it would annoy people (it's what robocallers do best) and they would end up resenting their pharmacy and their scrip. The study just told the public what the pharma companies had already known (and utilized) for years. I'm all for better and tighter regulation of the Pharma industry, but I don't see a way of replacing the profit motive with pure benevolence.

Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[darkmeridian]

Attacking lawyers completely misses the point. You should be attacking the greedy medical researchers and doctors who decided to patent a gene. Lawyers are just middlemen. If the doctor-inventors weren't greedy SOBSs, they wouldn't have patented the genes to they could extort a higher amount from women trying to not die of breast cancer.

Misread

[dohzer]

Did anyone else read it as "US District Judge Rules Gene Patients Invalid"?

Well put.

[epoxide]

Plus, a lot of the sequencing was done by a private for-profit company, Celera, at a fraction of the cost of the public effort.

Re:Well put.

[Vesvvi]

If I remember correctly, the Celera data was also more incomplete than the public data. Both projects announced "completion" long before the sequencing was truly complete: genetics has a long tail of data that is more and more difficult to collect, and this long tail was ignored when they said "done". I'm not even sure if it's 100% finished today, but just from memory I think that the public project had a better coverage of the difficult regions compared to Celera.

Many things that could be said about Celera...

[Anonymous Coward]

But remember that the data published by Celera included the Celera generated data (cost about $300e6), but also the public data (cost about $3e9). So, strictly speaking, Celera's data cost more than the public data, because it was a superset.

Don't get me wrong. Celera did a number of great things. The competition made the public project get their act together and come in early and under budget (and is now still going at a much faster clip because of it).

Just remember, like a lot of companies, they stood on the shoulders of giants.

Huzzah!

[hallux.sinister]

This is great news for me! With all patent concerns swept away, surely the injunction against my cells copying their own genetic code will be lifted, and they can resume their normal mitotic and meiotic activities! This is really wonderful because since the question came up, they have been unable to reproduce, (legally) and consequently, I have been feeling really sick lately. What a breath of fresh air! :)

Patents Vs Incentives for Research

[v1x]

The question of what might happen to research in the absence of patents or without the prospect of commercialization is an interesting one by itself, and many slashdot readers have noted the pros and cons of patents in the posts above. As is evident from the publications describing the evidence for these genes--and arguably also the publications that preceded these specific discoveries--a large body of this research was supported by pubic funding.
Therefore if there were any serious argument in favor of the patentability of genes, then I would argue that the taxpayers that bore the burden of supporting such research are also entitled to a stake in the returns from the patents. In the very least, they could start by paying the NIH and other sponsors of their research in the same way that they pay the Universities where the research is typically conducted, so that these funding agencies may then invest in other researchers.

Patents get it RIGHT, folks!

[mcrbids]

Patents aren't perfect. No form of IP is - all forms of IP are a compromise.

But in large part, (perhaps excepting software patents and MAYBE gene patents) the concept of a "patent" gets it RIGHT!!!

In the area of pharmaceuticals, If you do away with patents, then you lose the endless supply of 20-year-old innovation you now know as "generic drugs" because the deal with patents is that, in exchange for FULL AND COMPLETE DISCLOSURE of the patented concept, the owner/holder of the patent gets a reasonable amount of time (20 years in most cases) to exploit the patent for profit. At the end of that 20 years, the patent concepts become public domain and are carefully documented for the public domain.

Just tonight, I took a generic form of Coreg for my blood pressure. It's a highly effective drug that cost millions to develop. Because the original drug was patented, the method of producing it was well documented and in the public domain. The result was a box of pills that extend my life at a cost of just $7 per month!

Do away with drug patents and you won't see cheaper drugs, you'll see more expensive drugs, and a rapid halt of forward progress.

Re:Patents get it RIGHT, folks!

[Beezlebub33]

Do away with drug patents and you won't see cheaper drugs, you'll see more expensive drugs, and a rapid halt of forward progress.

The case is not proposing doing away with drug patents. They are an invention, and therefore patentable.

Re:Patents get it RIGHT, folks!

[Squiggle]

Because the original drug was patented, the method of producing it was well documented and in the public domain.

This assumes that reverse engineering the drug is of sufficient complexity that it would lock out most/all competitors. I know nothing of the pharmaceutical industry so I can't comment. Your worse assumption is that without patents the industry would somehow still (badly) function the way it does today. Rather, without patents things would be very different. One possible future might be more like script writers and the movie industry. Researchers would be sending how to make particular drugs to the manufacturers of them, trying to convince the manufacturers that retooling for their particular drug is a good investment. Perhaps drugs become highly personalized such that many researchers spend most of their time personalizing drugs for particular individuals who then contract out to a local drug manufacturer for the prescription. In any case, the industry certainly won't look like a non-functional version of the patent-system based one we have today.

Re:Patents get it RIGHT, folks!

[Anonymous Coward]

please note: drug patents != gene patents. BIG difference. This ruling says nothing about patents having to do with drugs and methods for curing disease. It's simply saying that if some discovers which of your genes causes your high blood pressure, they do not get to patent the gene itself (that DISCOVERY is not intellectual property).

Re:Patents get it RIGHT, folks!

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously you dont know what the judges ruling was. RTFA. Only the gene patent is invalid not their discovery process or whatever the hell they did with it.

Patents don't prevent research

[BitZtream]

Patents actually make the research a little easier, part of it has to be published. No one is going to sue anyone for doing pure research.

Patents take away the financial incentive for someone else to expand on it. No one does research on the patented object because theres no return on the investment in resources other than pure intellectualism.

Contrary to what you might think the entire world does not live on random 'feel good' vibes from committing patches to GPL software and during research just to share with everyone else.

If you think patents prevent research you don't have a very good connection to reality. Greed and motivation control what gets researched.

The argument that patents prevent research is just as valid as the argument that patents promote research.

Patents in general should not exist

[jprupp]

Patents hamper innovation by creating artificial government-issued monopolies on ideas, knowledge and information whose value would be several orders of magnitude higher if allowed to flow freely. It's an aberration of property rights.

Patents are for something you create, not catalog

[meerling]

Since the people patenting genes aren't creating them, even by accident, I've never understood how they could possible claim a patent on them. (Or copyright, or trademark.)

Now if it was a man made gene sequence, that would be another story, but even then, I'd say copyright the new gene you made, and maybe patent the process if it's new.

As to the Rx companies that whine "we can't make new drugs if we don't have a patent on the gene", well, how do I put this lightly...
You are so full of sh## it's unbelievable! You patent the new drug you greedy lying morons!

Ok, I'll end this rant for now.

Conversely Nothing: Invest In The Test

[cmholm]

And let us also hope that financial backers and investors don't pass on the idea of investing in said research without the potential payout of a full term patent.

The court has done investors a favor: it has set firm rules for an aspect of bio R&D commercialization. An aspect of nature is not patentable. To leave patented the use of the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 mutations as a diagnostic marker for certain types of cancer is directly analogous to patenting the finding that a salt dome is a marker for fossil fuel deposits.

Is the discovery useful? Yes. Did the discoverers create the salt dome? No. Perhaps they can patent a new and novel method for finding salt domes, but that would be an invention, rather than a discovery of the natural world.

It's one thing to patent a sequencer, quite another to patent what it sequences.

just a guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

i wonder if they tried demanding women pay them royalties to have kids.

the true inventor

[Anonymous Coward]

To be discovered, a gene must first be manufactured by a living being.
That living being, having manufactured the prototype, would be the only possible party to lay claim.

Thus, the first human to ever get breast cancer would be the only one who could legally file for a patent on it.

I'm pretty sure that the deadline for that has expired.

Stupid from the start - patent system

[unity100]

can you imagine someone holding the patent to theory of gravity ? or equations of momentum, or theory of relativity ?

well, this is what would happen if these were discovered in our time. some bastard would go patent them and claim 'rights' on them.

its no different than patenting a gene. a gene is not an invention, not a creation. it is something that existed for millions of years, in the body of every human that has walked the earth. there is no way in hell that it would have any logic granting 'rights' on those.

really. time is long past for abolition of trade and copyright systems. they have turned into a medieval land grab moving toward intellectual feudalism. better to stop these things at the start than try to fight them off later.

no, not in accord with science

[Anonymous Coward]

there are two steps in ID: one showing that a particular region of DNA is causally associated with a disease, and then sequencing the dna.
with modern technology, once you know a particular gene is associated with a disease, methods to test for the diseased gene are "obvious", eg if you know about multiplex RT qPCR or things like that

what is missing in this discussion is that myriad was making huge, huge sums off a obvious test

scientists says

[cinnamon colbert]

I actually know a lot about DNA, and I will assert that once you know that a particular piece of DNA needs to be tested for, the way to test is "obvious" and therefore, non patentable. For instance, lets say a researcher discovers that some new gene - newgeneX - occurs in several different forms (think eye color) among humans, and that one of these forms is associated with a very high risk of heart attack (think apo4e) once you know this, tests, such as PCR followed by sequencing (454, ion torrent, pacific, SoLid) are "obvious" so really

nice approach!

[molecular]

I kinda like the approach, instead of fighting cancer directly, just...

    1.) patent cancer codes
    2.) make cancer pay unreasonable licence fees for use in humans
    3.) watch cancer vanish

Plato didn't think that artifacts had forms

[brokeninside]

Only natural beings have forms in Plato. Artifacts have something like a form within the human mind but it isn't a form. It's particular to the intellect that is thinking it rather than being universal.

But, he would agree that nothing is ever discovered or invented. Positing an eternal world where all souls transmigrate from being to being, he appears to have through that every soul has done everything there is to do and has seen everything there is to do. So the process of discovery and invention would better be referred to as the process of recollection. It's merely remembering what went before.

But all of that is rather irrelevant. The universe of discourse is the legal realm which has no clear correspondence to the world as Plato saw it.

"I just patented New England"

[thodelu]

That is what homesteading & property rights over natural resources including land does - patents over land - right?!?

Trade secret

[sjbe]

why can't I patent my own genes?

No need. For most of us it's a trade secret! Probably protected under copyright too. Only you have the right to distribut... hmm, this took a bad turn somewhere...

Not cooperative

[sjbe]

Plus, a lot of the sequencing was done by a private for-profit company, Celera, at a fraction of the cost of the public effort.

The projects were not cooperative. The HGP mapped a genome and Celera did the same. They did not pool their data.

Re:Not cooperative

[Simon80]

They did not pool their data, but Celera was able to use the public data to help themselves solve their own genome - so in effect the private project had an unfair advantage. Their goals were also to map out the human genome so that they could patent as many genes as possible.

All research is descriptive

[sjbe]

I wasn't aware that they did "research and medical breakthroughs" It's the difference between reading a book and writing a book..

You think there were no technology developments that went into the HGP? You think nothing was learned about the human genome in the process? By your definition all research is just "reading a book" because after all, we didn't invent relativity or quantum mechanics or biochemistry.

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Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[Anonymous Coward]

Attacking lawyers completely misses the point. You should be attacking the greedy medical researchers and doctors who decided to patent a gene. Lawyers are just middlemen. If the doctor-inventors weren't greedy SOBSs, they wouldn't have patented the genes to they could extort a higher amount from women trying to not die of breast cancer.

Well greedy SOB doctor-inventors hire greedy SOB lawyers to represent them. This is largely because non-greedy and/or non-SOB lawyers are busying doing other things like pro bono work with the poor, redressing false convictions through the Innocence Project, working as either prosecutors or public defenders, or even making decent (in multiple senses of the word) money assisting other people start and run non-inherently exploitative businesses. Furthermore, even if this other group of lawyers wasn't already busy enough actually doing constructive things, their sense of human decency would probably prevent them from tolerating having greedy SOBs of any type as clients. Therefore I do blame the greedy SOB lawyers just as much as their greedy SOB clients, because they have chosen to enable and legitimize their clients attempt to wring every last dime from the misfortunes of others when they have plenty of options to use their legal training in other ways!

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Re:About time they got their hands out of my genes

[Anonymous Coward]

You need some clarification. He wrote "groping around in my genes" not "groping around in my jeans". And it's the second that stops after the wedding night - not that most /.ers would know since they still live alone in their parent's basement.

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The secret formula is........

[malp]

advertising

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in ten years technology has improved

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because ten years after the project has started, the technology has advanced sufficiently for that to be possible.