Stem Cell Patent Halts Hospital's Collection

eldavojohn writes "It's a classic case that comes up when dealing with patents. A hospital's research on the donated brains of deceased children has been in limbo for three years because of a challenge from a patent holder. The double-edged sword of patents that spurred investment into the field will also cause chilling effects on research like the case of the Children's Hospital of Orange County. They've now been forced to shift the money from the lab to lawyers in order to deal with this ongoing patent dispute over a technique that was developed to extract stem cells at the Salk Institute. Unfortunately the Salk Institute failed to patent the technology, so a company named StemCells happily had it approved. The real disheartening news is that CHOC's Dr. Philip H. Schwartz — the doctor collecting the cells — was one of the original researchers who helped developed this technique at the Salk Institute. Now he can't even use the technique he helped create. Schwartz has since been instructed not to publicly discuss the case further. Research interests are clashing with commercial interests in a classic case that causes one to wonder if patents surrounding medical techniques like this stretch too far. As for the people that donated their dead child's brain to research, those valuable stem cell cultures have been kept in storage instead of being disseminated to research labs (which desperately need them) across the country."

Comments

Re:Publish Owners Names

[TooMuchToDo]

They're based out of Palo Alto.

http://www.stemcellsinc.com/company/management.html

http://www.stemcellsinc.com/company/executiveofficers.html

http://www.stemcellsinc.com/company/scientificfounders.html

Re:How patently stupid.

[Jeng]

Didn't RTFA?

One of the doctors complaining is one of the doctors that invented the process.

Re:here you go

[iamhassi]

Mr. Martin M. McGlynn serves as President, Chief Executive Officer, Director of StemCells Inc....$1,324,380 per year

'Tis good to be a patent troll

Why do we have patents on life-saving techniques? Can you imagine if there was a patent on washing your hands or stitching a wound?

Re:ah, thank goodness

[Attila Dimedici]

The research in question was never effected by Christian fundamentalists since it does not involve embryonic stem cells. Of course that is true of all of the promising stem cell research. Christians do not have a problem with stem cell research, Christians have a problem with embryonic stem cell research. What is nice about this is that none of the research that is showing promise for providing cures involves embryonic stem cells.

Research exemption

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

He didn't assume it, he asked about it.

And may have been thinking about the 271(e)(1) exemption or "Hatch-Waxman exemption".

Re:The value of defensive patents.

[MojoRilla]

It is unclear that StemCells was wrongly awarded its patent. From the TFA:

The roots of the conflict go back several years. While at Salk Institute, Schwartz created a new application out of an existing technique: deriving neural stem cells from post-mortem brains, then growing them in culture. At the same time, StemCells was doing similar things.

So it seems that both inventions were made at the same time, independently. In that case, either party may file for and be awarded the patent in the US.

Re:prior art?

[Hognoxious]

The word you're looking for is "afoul". Though you did conjure up an interesting image.