Patent Troll Going After Alzheimer's Researchers

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Nature News: "The website of the Alzheimer's Institute of America (AIA) doesn't reveal much about the organization, but portrays it as committed to supporting research and patients. Among people who study Alzheimer's disease, however, the AIA, based in St Louis, Missouri, is best known for filing lawsuits against companies and researchers — a practice that scientists say could hamper the progress of research into combating the dreaded disease."

Comments

Poetic justice

[Locke2005]

Can somebody equip an Alzheimer's patient with a few Uzi's, send him into these guys office, and tell him the office is full of Nazi's? He can claim he is not responsible for his actions due to his Alzheimer's, and these bastards can get the justice they so richly deserve.

I joined an Alzheimer's support group, but I keep forgetting to go to the meetings...

Re:Poetic justice

[pitchpipe]

Can somebody equip an Alzheimer's patient with a few Uzi's

There is no need. The judges that will oversee these cases will have no problem seeing the absurdity of this patent trolls claim's due to the proximity of Alzheimers to their own mortality. They only have a problem seeing patent/copyright trolls for what they are when it affects the young/poor.

What shouldn't be patentable

[OverlordQ]

The suit concerns an AIA patent on a human DNA sequence used in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease.

This.

Re:What shouldn't be patentable

[Charliemopps]

It's not legal. Congress passed a provision in the 80's to allow companies to patent genetically modified crops so someone couldn't simply steal some seeds and resell them. The provision does not cover animals, and certainly not human DNA. The courts have continually failed to distiguish between the 2 and since congress sees the united states ecenomic future and being the worlds patent troll, they go right along with this shameful practice. There are even several AIDS drugs that were derived directly from blood samples taken from desperately poor prosititutes in Africa. They actually patented the poor womens entire DNA sequence. If anything gets you sent to hell, it's this sort of crap.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good. The trolls are (stupidly) getting into areas people really care about (rather than software innovation) and the backlash could be very useful in driving change.

Meanwhile, AIA CEO Darl McBride ...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

... demanded a $799 license fee from every sufferer of Alzheimer's Disease, since he owns the copyrights to the disease.

Darl: "How dare you develop that disease without paying me first!"

Patent on human genes ...

[gstoddart]

This is why any form of patent on naturally occurring genes is complete and utter bullshit.

Is AIA also suing the Swedish family in which they found this mutation? Because, they're clearly infringing on the patent.

There is no way that it makes sense to be able to patent parts of someone else's DNA. This doesn't do anything to "further innovation" or any of the things people say patents are for ... it lets some idiot patent something he found (not created), sell it to a 3rd party, and then that 3rd party prevents other people from using it for research. DNA is a "fact" not an "invention".

In this case, I'd like to know which takes precedence .. the NIH requirement to share the mice, or this absurd "patent".

This is just so wrong.