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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."
A group that didn't invent it shouldn't even be able to patent it. Fuck you, "StemCells", fuck you to the grave.
How can StemCells be granted a patent for this technique? It would seem that Salk Institute can prove that it is prior art (i.e. that they utilized this technique prior to any patent claims by StemCells), invalidating the patent claim by StemCells.
Why do you assume there has to be a profit motive in order to run amok of patents?
They still have to go to court to get it invalidated, though.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
The solution to over-patenting isn't more patents. That would just be shoveling more money to lawyers and away from doing research or curing people. The solutions here seem to be to either allow nonprofits and universities to use patents for basic research, or to shorten patent lengths. A 20 year patent seems ridiculous when product lifecycles and discoveries are moving much more quickly.
A guy with a Barret M107, a handful of .50 BMG bullets with "for this patent bullshit" engraved on them and an escape helicopter would help, too.
Every time I read about scumbags like this, I'm more and more convinced that this is indeed the only way.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
How nice that they're allowed to spend ten to twenty thousand dollars applying for a patent that they don't intend to use. All in an effort to prevent what is basically being blackmailed by a company that has not only stolen your ideas from you, but also from everyone else who would do work in the field. What a wonderful, effective system we have.
Double edged sword. It can take decades of time and millions upon millions to spit out one thing useful. Patents give return on investment.
I'd love research done for research's sake too, but pragmatism has this nasty habit of beating the snot out of idealism.
However...
Besides, if you didn't invent it, screw off.
Damn right. StemCells needs to be staplegunned to the wall for this crap...as well as the Patent Office being held liable too, since someone didn't do their prior art research.
I don't see any proof of that in the article. The article implies that it was lack of initiative by Salk Institute that allowed StemCells to secure a patent on the technique: "The dispute comes down to access to a technique that Schwartz helped develop at the Salk Institute but the institute failed to patent. StemCells did." Can you provide a citation that gives a detailed chronology? In any case, Weissman comes off as a huge hypocrite by freezing out a research group with no commercial interests --- i.e., on the one hand he'll advocate for freedom to carry out this research, while simultaneously stymieing basic, non-commercial research with the other. This is what really bothers me about patents: They can enable commercial interests to erect a fence and keep out any public research in a potentially large area of science. Commercial interests can often secure funds to pay for licensing the patents. This usually is not in the budget for publicly funded research groups. (My preview shows this appearing as a wall of text, even though I have included white space.)
The point of patents is that if you come up with something cool, the patent protects your ability to make a living off of having done so both through marketing it yourself and through licensing it to others.
It doesn't often work that way in practice. Patents are used to prevent competition instead of encouraging it, and licensing fees are used to determine who can and who cannot practically work with the technology. It's yet another case where the basic idea was sound but the implementation is lacking. A major issue has been that the scientific and corporate landscape has changed significantly over time, while the patent system has not adapted adequately.