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Patents On Synthetic Life "Extremely Damaging"

Posted by kdawson on from the that-gene-right-there-that-one's-mine dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Pioneer and veteran of genomics Professor John Sulston is extremely concerned about the patent applications on the first synthetic life-form. The patents were filed by the Venter Institute following the announcement of the first life-form to have a synthetic genome. Sulston claims the patent is excessively broad and would stifle research and development in the field by creating an effective monopoly on synthetic life and related molecular techniques. Prof. Sulston had previously locked horns ten years ago with Dr. Craig Venter over intellectual property issues surrounding the human genome project. Fortunately, Sulston won the last round and the HGP is freely accessible — Venter had wanted to charge for access, just as he now wishes to make 'synthetic life' proprietary."

34 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Time to go.. by drewhk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .. and patent myself before it is too late!

    1. Re:Time to go.. by Pojut · · Score: 2, Funny

      And at the same time, I may pantent you as well.

      Is that when, instead of pulling someone's pants down, you just rip the pockets off? :p

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    2. Re:Time to go.. by confused+one · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's too late. There's already large sections of your genome that have been patented by various companies.

    3. Re:Time to go.. by drewhk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, we will form a patent pool. We call it F.A.M.I.L.I.

  2. This ain't a patent troll by BasilBrush · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Venter Institute have been working on this for 15 years. Allowing them to get a temporary monopoly to use or licence elements of the fruit of their R&D so they can get a return on their investment is exactly what the patent system was intended for.

    1. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Pojut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sometimes the depth of human greed astonishes me. This is something which, if openly available to the right people and if they were allowed to work on/improve on it as they saw fit, could literally change almost everything.

      Keeping it locked behind a patent is greed at its worst (or finest, depending on which side you are on.) I'm all for getting paid for your ideas, but some things (like, oh I don't know, synthetic life) should belong to the entire human race, not Joe McBob who can only see lawsuits and dollar signs.

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    2. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except patents were designed to protect specific objects, tools, and machines with specific functions--like the iPhone, Droid, cotton gin, etc. not fundamental biochemical interactions. If they're building a specific, non-cognizant organism for a specific purpose, ok; if they're going after the whole concept of synthetic life, no.

    3. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Pojut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry, I should have been more clear...I meant that the guy should be keeping his patent scope limited to exactly what he did, as opposed to making it so broad as to cover synthetic life in general.

      My bad -_-;;

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    4. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Kilrah_il · · Score: 2, Funny

      10 Yep, I think we can all safely say that The Genome is the mother of all Prior Art!
      20
      30 P.S.
      40 No, I didn't read the patent application, so I don't really know how broad their application is and if the summery doesn't stretch the truth a bit in Prof. Sulston's direction. Assuming the summery is correct - Go To 10

      --
      Whenever in an argument, remember this.
    5. Re:This ain't a patent troll by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I propose a viewpoint. As opposed to keeping discussion specific to individual patents or details of a certain case, we should talk about nuking the whole patent system entirely. It is a net loss. It is an archaic system based on naíve economic ideas. It is time to euthanize it.

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
    6. Re:This ain't a patent troll by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Venter Institute have been working on this for 15 years. Allowing them to get a temporary monopoly to use or licence elements of the fruit of their R&D so they can get a return on their investment is exactly what the patent system was intended for.

      No, the intent of the system is clearly written in the United States Constitution, and was to advance the arts and sciences. I.e. a consideration for the [b]people[/b], not the inventor.

      The time limitations on patents and copyrights were deliberately kept short in order to force the inventor or artist to create new work instead of living on the profits reaped from old works.

    7. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Pojut · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's the thing though...if people applied for patents that were limited in scope and describe only their invention, the system would be working exactly as it was intended to. Unfortunately, greed (on applicant's part) and complacency (on the USPTO's part) prevent this.

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    8. Re:This ain't a patent troll by arth1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      if there was no chance for a profit, it is unlikely that Venter would have spend the last 15 years and shitloads of money on the project.

      Correct.
      Which would have given others with less money more of a chance to work on this, without feeling it would be fruitless to compete against the big pockets and risk being sued into oblivion.

    9. Re:This ain't a patent troll by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Having a good idea is usually common, actually carrying it to fruition is a lot harder. I think that your viewpoint that we need patents to protect solitary inventors from a hypothetical scenario of a greedy corporation duplicating someone's idea well enough, is flawed. Sure, it's possible that it has happened or would happen to people, but we should be optimizing for the common case. Polihistors are a thing of the past, solitary invention is exceedingly rare. Inventions are evolutionary in the sense that it's a long line of small steps of improvements.

      Your scenario of a big evil company swooping down and taking the lone hero's invention is more psychological than based on real concern. A big soul sucking company would probably hire the guy who invented stuff with a generous enough salary. He is the expert on the thing after all, since he managed to innovate in the field. The guy wouldn't get millions of dollars, but he would make a decent living, a good enough outcome for most people. Noone needs millions of dollars for a comfortable living.

      The point is, even solitary inventors profit from innovation without having the protection of an artificial monopoly on abstract things that the patent system is. The vastly more common case is unfortunately the damage resulting from any patent system: patent trolls are not the problem I'm talking about, it's just a sympthom. The problem is slowing down the exchange of ideas and the feedback loop of step by step invention. A patent stops that loop. More than 99% of all patents are for small improvements on the already established knowledge base. You'd be hard pressed to find examples of innovation that wouldn't have been invented until the expiration of the patent describing something and are still useful after the expiry of the patent (maybe except cases where a patent retarded innovation so badly that most progress stopped in a field due to legal concerns).

      We need to get the legal system out of the free proliferation of ideas. It's not only software patents or patents on living organisms that are the problem, it's the fundamental misunderstanding of how innovation occurs.

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
    10. Re:This ain't a patent troll by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is like saying that without greed, communism would work :)

      In other words, the patent scheme is broken at it's core.

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
    11. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Haven't you seen Flash of Genius about the invention of windshield wipers?

      Yes. You should not get $20 million dollars for being the first person to think "Gee, I wish my windshield wipers had more speeds."

    12. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Reality: Average Joe invents something. Average Joe has the foresight to patent it. Corporation X sees invention and mass-produces it for less than Average Joe can. Average Joe sues Corporation X, but is told that his estimated legal costs for the case will be $1,500,000 once they have done stalling and playing games. Corporation X offers to buy Joe's patent for a pitance, and Joe relctantly agrees.

    13. Re:This ain't a patent troll by Locklin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Of course, the thousands of people who spent the prior 50 years developing the *methodologies* that he used, will be locked out of synthetic life until their children are middle aged. Despite romantic ideas, invention is not a solitary operation. He may have been the first to the finish line using "shitloads of money," but patents will do nothing but slow down progress. The world will start working with synthetic life in a quarter century, whereas without Venter and patents, the we would have synthetic life in <5 (at the rate of progress in molecular biology).

      --
      "Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
  3. Prior Art by Mattskimo · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd better hurry up and spit in a bag and post it to myself as evidence of prior art.

  4. Re:I couldn't think of a car analogy by master5o1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's like a company that tries to patent an object that has four wheels, a steering wheel, a wind shield and an engine.

    --
    signature is pants
  5. World domination. Finally. by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if you study steel, all steel structures should be yours? And if you study the world...

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:World domination. Finally. by couchslug · · Score: 3, Funny

      "So if you study steel, all steel structures should be yours? And if you study the world..."

      I'll study poontang, thank you very much!

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    2. Re:World domination. Finally. by ArbitraryDescriptor · · Score: 2, Funny

      So if you study steel, all steel structures should be yours?

      Sure, who cares about steel; steel is weak. What is steel compared to the synthetic flesh that wields it? Now go and contemplate this on my re-sequenced Tree of Woe (patent pending*)

      *That is power.

    3. Re:World domination. Finally. by lennier · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The moral of this story: if you create an honest creation to use, rather than to sell - assuming it's a creation which is beneficial to all and not something which helps the wielder while harming others (like say a weapon or a secret process which only gives your business 'competitive advantage' in a zero-sum market) - then you will lose nothing by not patenting or copyrighting it but will in fact gain hugely, as your creation will be distributed widely, make the world more efficient, spark new and better ideas, and you'll benefit personalyl from living in that improved world.

      But much of our social infrastructure views creativity as something you do primarily to sell to others, or get advantage over others. And as long as we think in that way, we'll always be threatened by creativity happening elsewhere, and therefore will seek to control and stamp out creativity in others - and view copying as a form of theft.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  6. Re:Very bad by schn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's actually a decent point; under this, would a sentient robot have to pay for access to it's own genome, for reproduction or otherwise?

  7. Don't you understand? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Craig Venter's dream is to use the tools of science to create the world's first true patent troll. Not a mere shell corporation; but a living, breathing creature, equal parts mythological tusks and contemporary instinct for ruthless litigation. Natural habitat? The Texas rocket-dockets...

  8. Patents by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We should start calling them "Letters of Marque", so people will understand their purpose better.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:Patents by Rogerborg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I will trade my lunch for mod points.

      What makes this spookily accurate is the focus on global "intellectual property" enforcement regimes, so that "we can protect our interests abroad". Raw nationalist piracy on a scale that makes pillaging the Plate Fleet look like a 10 cent raid on a Take A Penny, Leave a Penny box.

      Good gravy, and wait until the Chinese get in on the act. Instead of ignoring "IP" rights and actually making things - hah, naive fools - imagine a billion Chinese patent trolls filing three patents a day each and getting rich from the sweat of your brow.

      When you start a shooting match, you'd best be sure that you're bringing the biggest guns.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  9. Re:Unfortunately for him by asukasoryu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sexual reproduction has a limited input genome. Nature cannot create anything that does not already exist in the parents, save deviation due to mutation. The idea behind synthetic life is that you can produce any genome and therefore create lifeforms which could not occur naturally. The issue is whether or not you can patent a specific genome so that others cannot use it freely.

    --
    There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
  10. Oh it's fine. by Aphoxema · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not so worried about this. Monsanto already showed exceptional responsibility with their GM patents on 99.5% of the crops our food, clothes, textiles, and medicines come from. Let's take it to the next step.

    --
    "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    1. Re:Oh it's fine. by Barrinmw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is ok for there to be potential for abuse as long as the person with the power does not abuse it? But what happens when they decide to?

    2. Re:Oh it's fine. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      @Aphoxema: my guess is you are a Monsanto employee because if there's one company being terribly irresponsible with their patents on LIFE (which I can think should be forbidden), it would be Monsanto.
      Please watch the documentary "Food Inc." and you'll see the true face of this horrible company.

      I'm talking:
      - seeds with suicide gens in them so farmers can only use them once
      - plants that grow only once and do not provide seeds at all, so they have to be bought again at Monsanto
      - 70 Monsanto employees scouring the US 24/7 looking for patent infringements and when they find farmers that reuse their seeds those are put out of business

      The sad example where the seeds of a farmer using Monsanto seeds blew over to his neighbor who did not use those seeds and Monsanto now suing the neighboring farmer for illegally using their seeds...

      Yes, very responsible indeed.

      It all comes down to the fact that patenting life is simply outrageous. But I'm afraid the Monsanto case has set a precedent and the current applications will be successful.

      But once again, watch "Food Inc." and form your own opinion.

  11. Re:Unfortunately for him by Rogerborg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, bacteria can exchange genetic material. While it's not sexual reproduction, it's still pretty damn hot if you watch it under a microscope.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  12. Re:Exter ... ? by Thanshin · · Score: 2, Informative

    There was one, before the typo in the news title was corrected.