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Never Mind the Epidemic, Who Gets Patent Rights For the Cure?
A virus that has so far killed nearly thirty people in seven countries faces a non-medical obstacle to treatment: Patents.
Reader Presto Vivace writes with this excerpt from the Council on Foreign Relations: "At the center of the dispute is a Dutch laboratory that claims all rights to the genetic sequence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus [MERS-CoV]. Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told the WHO meeting that "someone"--a reference to Egyptian virologist Ali Zaki--mailed a sample of the new SARS-like virus out of his country without government consent in June 2012, giving it to Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam."
It's a Material Transfer Agreement that means you agree to some restrictions including sharing / ceding patent rights. (That's OK, it's Timothy, we don't exactly expect accuracy here.)
But the real answer is 'so what'? Berne Convention, be damned. Countries with a vested interest in this issue aren't going to let some weenie little Dutch lab push them around.
And they got the material illegally in the first place.
I'll go back to breathing normally now.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If they're claiming the rights to the virus, they have to take the wrongs along with it. Hold them accountable for the damage the virus does, up to and including loss of human life.
You reap all the rewards, but you're also responsible for all the harm. So if you want to claim you own a virus, then you're also fiscally and criminally liable for any harm that virus does. It also takes care of the Monsanto case where farmers who unknowingly have GMO crop blown onto their fields are successfully sued for patent infringement, but when organic farms who don't want the GMO stuff try to sue Monsanto for the same thing, Monsanto claim they have no responsibility for Nature spreading their seed around.
After all, these people did not invent them and even if they did, that would basically be software, again free from patentibility in any sane legal systems.
Do it any other way and the immoral vultures come in, people that not only do not care about others at all, but want to prevent anybody else from doing any work in areas the perceive as "theirs". That is a sure recipe for disaster.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If they "own" the virus, then send them the bill for ALL expenses related to the disease and it's effects. Put a lien on all their patents until they pay up.
If you can't pay for it the free market has decided you shouldn't survive.
all problems solved ;)
seriously... maybe... perhaps all these medical/life sciences patents and issues should be placed in public domain? like you boot up Unix and get (c) by 20 different companies? Universal MegaMedCorp LLC PTY M-O-U-S-E gets its name on every vial regardless who made it. good for mankind, good for morale.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You are not supposed to be able to patent discoveries. Genetic sequences already exist unless you're doing genetic engineering. Therefore you should not be able to patent any genetics found in nature, because you haven't created a God-damned thing.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Never Mind the Epidemic, Who Gets Patent Rights For the Cure?"
I imagine that since the cure is, by definition, a derivative work of the disease, that some of the royalties will have to go to the labs that created the original disease.
Obviously, if it's an "Act of God" rather than a lab that created the disease, the money should go in tithing to your local church.
Correspondingly, you should be able to sue your local church, as God's representative on Earth, for compensation for any loss of life, pain and suffering, property damage, and so on, where Acts of God are involved unless, you know, they were to disclaim any association.
They're well known for being tight bastards. The reason their flag has horizontal stripes is so it can fray halfway to the staff before they need to buy a new one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I would not worry to much about the patent rights, when holder is dead from this disease (natural spread due to the pandemic taking place) the patent is going to be confiscated by the government (of the U.S and rest of the world).
You can't make money out this patent if 80% of the world population is dead due to this pandemic.
I say that if they claim the patent/all rights/ownership of this virus, then should they be held liable for the deaths caused by " their" virus?
Our Dutch friends don't understand the non-medical meaning of a magic bullet. Yet.
At the center of the dispute is a Dutch laboratory that claims all rights to the genetic sequence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus
...With one catch - You bear criminal responsibility for every single person who dies from it once you stake your claim to it. I would add "moral" responsibility as well, but hell, a retarded 2YO could have explained that one to you.
You fuckers want the rights to it? Granted!
If I own an aggressive dog, I have liability for its actions. Why should we treat the absolute lowest of the low, who let people die to make a buck, any better?
It might be worth whatever consequence from breaking this law if it saves lives.
whine about patents. Because whining about patents cures ... ?
People with drug patents might actually help you when you're sick. What will the anti-patent crowd do for you when you're sick? Besides trying to take away the financial incentive to cure you?
The disease decided you shouldn't survive. Free people making free choices decided to help you live instead. They're just asking for something in return for their time and effort.
Saudi Arabia better hope they NEVER run out of oil..
I really doubt the world would put up with their insane head up their own stupid ass antics otherwise..
How the hell can you patent a virus? You did not create it, and the dutch certainly did not discover it so on what grounds do they have to apply for a patent?
Before critiquing the /. article or subject, read the citation through to the end. Read the information about the Indonesian case, and the reason Indonesia refused to share, and the legal solution, which are among the reasons Saudi Arabia is objecting.
Western investors in pharmaceuticals want money. They want patents and agreements that will guarantee them profits from cures for epidemics. They don't give a damn about the people who die of the diseases, particularly if those people could not have afforded to be customers contributing to making their investments profitable. The Indonesians, and the Saudis, want to put the lives of their "throw-away" citizens (third-worlders, Muslims, riff-raff, you know) ahead of the profits curing only those who can afford the cure and sucking off funds of charities to pay the margins their patents etc. add on, may provide them.
Who are the villains, the legal manipulators for profit western pharmaceuticals and their investors, who want to force themselves in as middle-men, or the local health professionals who refuse to release samples, while infected people die, to assure that cures, when they become available, will be affordable (and more difficult for Machiavellians to manipulate for 'real-politic purposes?
I will use those words the next time I'm looking for a polite way to describe blackmail.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
you or any company patent the virus and then sue it if it tries to go on replicating itself in any cell on earth without your permission. This would be the end to all illnesses caused by viruses, right? oh, I guess I have to hurry up to patent this idea! Do I get the Nobel prize for medicine for this breakthrough?? I'm a genius, right?
30 people wooooo.
Isn't this like how you can't copyright a map? You can protect your version of the map but if someone else makes a map of the same area they will end up with the same map. This is why map makers put little errors in their maps so as to prove that it is a copy of their effort and not just another map.
I hope the Dutch lose because this would set a terrible precedent in that nothing should get in the way of curing epidemics. If it is a truly bad epidemic hours can be the difference in a an order or orders of magnitude of deaths.
The farmer who grows your food is also "blackmailing" you the same way.
If someone gets their panties in a bundle because a pandemic-capable bug was shipped from their neighborhood, perhaps we should just fumingate their population to prevent its spread. Or, you could join the international community of science. Your choice.
map makers put little errors in their maps so as to prove that it is a copy of their effort
Does anyone know that that is called? I thought I knew a real word for it once... maybe industry jargon and not a "dictionary" word?
Maybe someone in the map biz can educate us.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
. ..under the condition that they are responsible for any damages caused by 'their' gene.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I do not get it. Patent are only national protection, and one would have to file in every juridiction to get a world wide protection. And a sovereign nation can decide to make some patent invalid, the only thing that could refrain it from doing so is WTO's TRIPS, but not everyone signed it, and even for the nations who did, it has provisions to trump patents because of the general interest. See TRIPS article 27.2:
Members may exclude from patentability inventions, the prevention within their territory of the commercial exploitation of which is necessary to protect ordre public or morality, including to protect human, animal or plant life or health or to avoid serious prejudice to the environment
So where is the problem?
Sue them for criminal liability for anyone who gets sick from the illness. If they want to own the disease, then make them criminally liable for it.
Patents are for technology and copyrights are for works created by people. Neither are for facts of nature. Genes should not be patented. Those who try to patent the genetic sequences of living things should have their own genes rendered into slag.
If a thing called a human being asserted ownership of a patent for a virus, and used that patent in any way to block research for a cure, then . . ..
Well whatever happens. Don't get the vaccine. Here are excellent examples.
Historical trends show that deaths caused by childhood illnesses had already declined as much as 90% before vaccine programs were ever initiated. Evidence indicates that an improved standard of living, better nutrition, and increased sanitation, caused this drop in disease, not vaccines.
“In 1954 the Americans pushed forward a polio campaign. What happened within the first year was that to their horror they found that particularily one type of the polio vaccine was causing polio. Because the vaccine is not a killed virus, your giving polio in a partly killed form. They got rid of that particular type of the vaccine. Then they realized that all the forms of the polio vaccine caused polio. So what they did is redefine it. They only called it polio if you still had paralysis after 60 days. Now in most cases polio paralysis resolves after a few days. So that's how the statistics of polio went down. By changing the definitions.” Dr. David Ritchie
“Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names like viral or aseptic meningitis...According to one of the 1997 issues of the MMWR there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis in the United States alone. That's where all those 30,000 - 50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction of mass vaccination” Dr. Vera Schiebner
Vaccines are a scam.
It means they intend to battle the coronavirus by sueing it for patent infringement. Might work.
The farmer is protected from thieves by society in exchange for fait price. See the error in you raisoning? If not, go to Somalia.
Am I the only one here who thinks that issues related to diseases with global pandemic potential should be dealt with as a global threat and thus not bogged down by business and monetary gains? I mean seriously? I can understand patent culture in terms of Apple and Samsung but no one dies in the process. it's almost like the fire-fighting companies of the past (we won't save your house if you don't have a contract with us logic). Guess we need an international Virus Prime Directive: "Eliminate virus threat first. if your actions hinder this in any form (even through profiteering) you also are the virus. "
If you'd just bother to read the page you linked for reference, you'd see this:
Since the mid1990s, Monsanto indicates that it has filed suit against 145 individual U.S. farmers for patent infringement and/or breach of contract in connection with its genetically engineered seed but has proceeded through trial against only eleven farmers, all of which it won.[131] The Center for Food Safety has listed 112 lawsuits by Monsanto against farmers for claims of seed patent violations.[132] The usual claim involves violation of a technology agreement that prohibits farmers from saving seed from one season's crop to plant the next. One farmer received an eight-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit fraud during litigation with Monsanto[133] in addition to having to pay damages.[134]
Monsanto sued the Pilot Grove Cooperative Elevator in Pilot Grove, Missouri, on the grounds that by cleaning harvested seeds covered by Monsanto's patents so that farmers could replant them, the elevator was inducing them to infringe Monsanto's patents. The Pilot Grove Cooperative Elevator had been cleaning conventional seeds for decades before the development of genetic engineering and developments in patent law led to the existence of issued patents that cover seeds.[135]
In one case in 2002, Monsanto mistakenly sued Gary Rinehart of Eagleville, Missouri for patent violation. Rinehart was not a farmer or seed dealer, but sharecropped land with his brother and nephew, who were violating the patent. Monsanto dropped the lawsuit against him when it discovered the mistake.[135]
If you'd truly like to know more, you can start on these different themes about Monsanto and RoundUp:
Killing 90% of amphibians
Wiping out bee colonies
Killing thousands of farmers
Causing widespready obesity diseases
I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg. They will suck the planet and humanity dry, and vanish like a puff of smoke when everything collapses due to their greed and harmful actions. Make no mistake, Monsanto and the owners behind it will do everything in their effort to prevent being held accountable. Company accountability is almost non-existant by law anyway. So to expect anything better than amoral sociopathic behaviour from corporations is foolish, naive at best.
Society protects the farmer from thieves because if society didn't, no one would farm and you would starve. Or only highly armed groups of men would farm inside fortifications, and they would shoot guys like you from the walls.
... of my recently granted patent on adenosine triphosphate. All your life are belong to me!
You can have all the rights to a virus' genetic sequence only if you accept responsibility for the destruction caused by that virus. Seems only fair.
If I own a gun that is used in a murder, I will face consequences; if you own a virus that kills thirty people, you should face consequences.
What an absolute joke modern 'science' is. THIRTY people, out of a world population of what, eight BILLION? How many other people died from other diseases during the same time period? 10 million? 50 million?
Does anyone know that that is called? I thought I knew a real word for it once... maybe industry jargon and not a "dictionary" word?
"Trap Street" is one such feature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
This is common, specific type of "Copyright Trap"; other bogus or distorted features may be used on maps other than street maps.
aren't there consequences if the thing you "own" hurts people? Maybe there should be.
My great-great-......grandfather discovered iron. Pay up bitch. We own that element. Quit using it.
I mean seriously, patenting genes and such and charging exhorberant DNA tests for thousands of dollars, when other companies have come up with tests that cost a mere $100. Just because you get to claim ownership of the gene.
This does not sound stupid to you?
I think it's clearly stupid. It would be like letting someone patent an element on the periodic table.