Slashdot Mirror
DNA Code - IP or Public Domain?
Anonymous Coward writes "A British trust has warned Celera Genomics that data from Human DNA should remain in the public domain to maximize benefits for medical research. Celera is about to patent DNA structures after decoding about one third of the human genome.
The Wellcome Trust is leading moves to stop the information becoming the private property of corporations.
" Celera has been brute-forcing structures, enabling them to beat The Human Genome Project to the punch - and are filing for 6000 patents. Please contact the Wellcome Trust to indicate your support of them. Patent attempts like Celera's stifle scientific progress.Update: 10/26 10:00 by H :Thanks to net_shaman for the pointer to a similar article in The Washington Post.
It's the ultimate in prior art... when you get to court just bring your dad to the stand.
"And when were you born sir?"
"April 3, 1942"
"And did you have blue eyes then?"
"yes"
" I submit to the court your honour that this gentleman had blue eyes before the filing date of the, 'blue eyed patent'."
No, that's prior art. You didn't invent the rain forest or the fungus; you just found it. What you can patent is the process by which you transform the raw fungus into the cancer-curing medicine
The genes already exist! IMHO, that should constitute prior "art". What, IMHO, should be patentable is the transferance process by which you make the more desirably commercial properties.
This would be entirely patentable. You have invented a process to improve the efficiency. Furthermore, it is an original and non-obvious process. But I don't really see what this has to do with your first two examples, or genetics.
I know the patent office disagrees, as they freely allow people to patent genes, but that is a clear violation of the patent concept and those people who allowed it should be shown the door. The sad thing is, the only door they're likely to be shown is the one to their new office, as they get to be promoted.
On the religious side (yes, there is an aspect to this that's definitely non-tech), we are approaching the end of the millenium. A flashpoint for several of the world's largest religions, all of which have bloody histories. Patenting something they claim ownership of could be just the trigger we DON'T need. I'd rather NOT be burned at the stake, because some company wanted to cash in on the gene-mapping craze, thank you very much.
Then, it would be an impossible patent to enforce. Yes, you can enforce the means of mapping, but that is VERY different from enforcing the genetic code itself. It'd be impossible to monitor for natural infringement (which WOULD count, as patents count against identical or similar inventions, even when no actual copying took place), and impossible to prove an absence of prior art. (You can't scan the DNA of every living person, let alone everyone who's died in the past 100,000 years.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While I don't agree that pre-existing natural 'source' should be patentable... I did a little research on it...
When you file for a patent in the US for anything including genome maps, you must publicly disclose it entirely within 2 years for patent protection.
Disclosure includes printed publications and/or a publicly accessible database. The US govt is then required to hold the information back for up to 3 years (usually less).
Now unless I'm mistaken, this means that you can go to IBM's little patent server instead of paying them for the information, though this might be considered illegal if you reprint it without permission.
Now in 1992 the NIH (National Institutes of Health) tried to patent several gene fragments and the PTO sent a rejection notice back to them immediately.
In 1997, the PTO said that it would allow expressed sequence tags (ESTs) to be patented. Now, ESTs are DNA sequences made up to a few hundred base pairs in length that can be used to identify the expression of specific genes.
As far as I'm considered, DNA is nothing more than the source code of life and should fall under the same catagory as algorithms when it comes to patents.
Now, patenting the effects of the new DNA is something entirely different. Should you be able to patent the method of replacing a specific sequence of old DNA with your particular new DNA sequences in order to change something, for example to change hair color in humans?
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
There have been rumblings from within the US govt, since Celera told a Senate Committee that it was planning to make its results freely available; it seems likely from the statements made by various people closely involved that these patents are unlikely to be considered legally defensible.
But in any case, Celera Genomics are guilty of some pretty reprehensible behaviour for the sake of extorting a quick buck...
NP
Can you sum it up in a word? *No.* In a noise? *Whuuuurghhhhh!*
"Or are they simply saying that if they go to the trouble of describing the genome in a useful way, and packaging it up, that people will have to pay to get that package."
If this is what they're saying they'd be talking about copyright, not patents.
> With trade secrets nobody can know about your
> process.
Wrong, with trade secrets, two groups can know about it.
1. Those willing to sign a NDA.
2. Those capable of reinventing it theselves.
The effect of patents is to exclude the second group.
Patents are a form for legal lobotomy. It denies people the right to utilize their own ideas.
------------
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Patenting DNA structures could lead to a whole new form of lawsuit. Since certain aspects of DNA structures are randomly determined (both through mutation and combination during sexual reproduction), it could be possible for anyone to infringe just by living.
I think that's pretty absurd.
"Oh, I'm sorry, we just got the patent on the gene which gives you blue eyes. We felt it was novel because of how it changes the pigment which colors the eye. License the patent or die."
Granted, I doubt that's their intentions. I can see patenting certain processes for building DNA strands, and perhaps even processes for integrating modified DNA within existing tissue. But patenting the DNA patterns themselves is like trying to patent any of nature's creations.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
http://patent. womplex.ibm.com/details?&pn=US05968742__&s_clms=1# clms
http://patent. womplex.ibm.com/details?&pn=US05962262__&s_clms=1# clms
It would be nice if a real biochemist could confirm it; but it looks to me as if the only genuine new knowledge in the each patent is the sequence information in Claim 1, and an identification that this sequence looks homologous to some other sequence we already know. The remaining claims then reflect the application of standard biochemical techniques, which make the sequence useful.
To be fair, there might be clues in the image pages and the prior art, which I haven't read; but I was struck by the very generic statement in the abstract, "The invention also provides methods for the prevention and treatment of diseases associated with expression of GPI-2h, as well as diagnostic assays". It's not clear (at least to me) that the authors definitely know that any diseases actually are associated with expression of GPI-2h.
Jon Peterson wrote:
A discovery can reasobaly considered IP in some situations, and so can a description.
Yes, but there are three legal forms of IP: patents, trademarks and copyrights. You just can't say "it's valid IP, therefore they can patent it". Trademarks are just plain offtopic here, so I'll talk about the other two.
They could easily justify copyrighting their information packages (and probably are doing so). They charge for the information, and the copyright keeps the people they send it to from redistributing it legally, except for fair use.
They're talking about patenting it. Patenting genes has gone on for a while, particularly in agricultural circles. If you patent a gene, nobody can USE the gene without a license. You buy a bag of genetically altered seed, part of what you are paying for is the license to use the patent on those genes. Here, they are making two big jumps from "mainstream" genetic patents:
* it's human genes now
* it's naturally occuring genes now
People are hopefully going to be more outraged now that we are messing with human genes. On the other hand, it's the second part that makes it more legally outraged. You should never be able to patent a discovery. Patents are for inventions, for novel ways of applying things. I might as well patent the oak tree outside my window, there's a lot of information there, it must be IP.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
"it's original intention was to protect businesses I'd think, but at the same time to promote "innovation" and "creativity". "
No. The Patent system was introduced to promote innovation and creativity, full stop. It was considered that people would not be able to spend years working on new things if there was no way to get a reward at the end, so patents were set up so that the discovery was made public at once, but that the discoverer had commercial rights for a while so they could recoup their losses.
Things have been rather altered in recent times, in favour of business and away from the public domain.
-----
A company spending millions of dollars on research has every right to protect its intellectual property by any means neccessary.
No they don't. You can't go around shooting people for violating copyright, you can't drop poison gas in a Hong Kong market to take out sellers of pirated CDs, etc. You can only do what the law allows. And you can only protect what the law allows you to protect.
The alternative to patent is trade secret information hidden from EVERYONE.
You mean everyone you don't have a contractual agreement with. Part of that contractual agreement would be serious damages if the secret is leaked. *This* is the way for companies to protect secret -- but not innovative, which is a requirement for patents -- discoveries.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Actually what Celera is interested in is the small variations in the entire sequence that make us all different from each other. These variations (SNIPs - single nucleotide polymorphisms) are expecially important in the sphere of drug metabolizing enzymes. Some people burn up all their ibuprofen, aspirin, or chemotherapy reigimens at rates that differ from the slower metabolizers. This is determined by the alleles that we inherit from our parents.
Information pertaining to the variability of metabolic rates of drugs both old and new are testable with gene chips and patients. This is where the money will be made from, selling/patenting the information needed to make the gene chip usefull to drug companies and hospitals.
In general, sequence is useless in the bussiness world unless you can profit from it.
A lot of people have posted comments to the effect of `Will I have to pay royalties if they`ve patented the gene for blue eyes?`. That`s not what the patents are for. The patents prevent other researchers from working on the same gene. This means that a company can hold onto a gene that could be a useful target for gene therapy, and no other company would be allowed to research it, even if the company who filed the patent thought it not worth their while to look into it. This is an indisputably Bad Thing.
If you actually look at a gene patent, you`ll see that what`s patented is the isolated form of the gene, not the gene in the context of the genome - along with methods for purifying and assaying the resulting protein. What is not covered in this patent is the gene in situ. So people with blue eyes, or whatever, needn`t get worried. The gene in your body isn`t patented. What`s worrying is the idea that because a company is patenting so much, it`ll be years before they get round to looking at some of the genes, some of which could be useful either in terms of finding out more about the way humans work, or in terms of finding cures for inherited disorders. The company can sit on the gene, safe in the knowledge that, because it`s patented, no-one else is going to research it until they`re ready.
The thing is, this gene patenting idea is fairly recent. But these days, academics, too, are having to patent their research just in order to prevent their work from being stolen out from under them. This goes completely against the information-sharing ethic that has always been a part of academic science.
So, not quite as scary as the idea of paying royalties to some corporation for your brown hair or strawberry birthmark, but scary nonetheless. Mass patenting of genes is already stifling research. Mass patenting of human genes can only make the problem worse.
Private industry stepped up to the plate and said that they will finish the task in less time than their overfunded government counterparts. Does anyone here really believe that academia alone would have finished the job?
The reason that Celera has managed to do it so fast is that they are merely churning out the sequences, whereas the academic research labs are actually taking the time to figure out what the genes do. Now, which is the more useful approach?
Here's what happens: The meme of Ridiculous Patents has entered the public sphere. A huge debate starts over what's fair to patent.
Desirable result: Political change might just happen. The patent system is reformed.
If it takes some greedy biological equivalent of UNISYS to force the public focus onto how the patent system sometimes works as a licence to extort, then this is a good thing. Because only then, will it get changed.
This URL seems to have a good intro on patent issues, government involvement and Venter and Incyte issues. Venter is in the for front here because he often makes controversial claims. But Incyte and Leroy Hood are both big players as well. The URL:
http://www.funding-first.org/com ment/12/comm2.html
-- Moondog
I'm a senior molecular and cell biology major at a major university. This is nothing new people. I have had profs in the past that have been paid upwards of a half a million dollars for gene sequences...specifically promoters. This type of patenting has been going on for a long time now...the public is just now beginning to care about it hence the stir and outrage. There's only a few thousand viruses and bacterial plasmids that are patented. If you can use it as a tool you can patent it. Knowing the sequence isn't the power...knowing what a specific sequence does in different contexts and whether it can be used to control other genes is the major application here. Several organisms have been completely sequenced. The companies that do this then sell the genetic maps to researchers and other companies who find them useful. You don't argue that maps are copyrighted right? they deserve it for doing all the work and as long as the price is reasonable its fair...(of course this is pre mapquest.com) The public needs to educate itself quite a bit because right now it is easy to start "scares" about this sort of thing.
That's not what I said. If one company is given a patent on human genes, then only that company can work with those genes, at least without paying for hugely expensive licensing agreements. If they're in the public domain then any commercial entity can work with them. Now lets see... which route is more likely to result in a cure for AIDS or cancer? That's why I object to patenting of human genes.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Just to play devil's advocate for a bit, the patent on LZW actually helped progress, rather than hindering it. If Unisys weren't such assholes about it, PNG wouldn't have come into being until much later than it did. Yes, GIF was a poor standard, and needed replacing, but until the patent problems, no-one was really doing anything about it. PNG (or something like it) would have eventually replaced GIF anyway, but probably not for many, many years.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
They're auctioning off the genetic material of "beautiful people". Ron Harris has arranged for an auction of eggs from eight models. You can read more about it from here:
http://abcnews.go. com/sections/us/DailyNews/modelseggs991023.html
Or, you can go straight to the website here: http://ronsangels.com
Next up from the site, a sperm auction.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Understandably this company wants to prevent that other people have a free ride on their years of effort to create this database.
Patents are no good for protecting the DNA database however. What they could do is patent the method used to collect the data, not the data itself.
The data collection could be protected with copyright. This would enable others to quote it (like you quote a phone book or a book of laws) but would make it illegal for somebody to just copy the entire database.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong about this, if so please point that out.
Jilles
In the 70's Pebble Beach Golf Course copyrighted a lone cypress tree that was frequently associated with their image. Their copyright statement to this day claims copyright on "The Lone Cypress Tree."
They apparently have a sign that says you may take pictures of the tree for personal use, but not for commerical reproduction. Go figure.
But the patented genes are artificial, or in some way artificially moved into another organism.
:)
A patent on a gene in general would seem to have a few billion problems with "prior art."
Give me a break. A patent over a specific gene doesn't mean a company literally owns that gene in your body, and sexual reproduction wouldn't violate said patent.
As somebody else phrased it in a question, "Or are they simply saying that if they go to the trouble of describing the genome in a useful way, and packaging it up, that people will have to pay to get that package."
That is precisely what they are doing -- just like although you can't patent gravity you can patent useful descriptions of gravity. The patent will give 17 year exclusivity for those companies to develop products that incorporate said genes such as treatments for genetic diseases.
I now the rest of you think such cures are just going to fall from the sky, but in the real world these things cost tons of money and nobody's going to invest that with out a property right of exclusivity so they can recoup costs and make a profit.
"Doc, I'm having a hard time breathing"
"Thats what you get for buying lungs at Futureshop"
crazy dynamite monkey
Their webmaster account is dead. I would
recommend to contact the listed contacts
from the whois database instead:
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Peterson, Marshall (MP11039) petersmr@CELERA.COM
(240) 453-3031 (FAX) (240) 453-4375
Billing Contact:
Thompson, Robert (RT6484) thompsrc@CELERA.COM
It's too important to be trusted to a commercial entity. We could be missing out on a cure for cancer or AIDS, bacause the company in question wasn't researching that area, and no-one else would touch the patented bits because it's easier to work on the other bits.
Patenting genes was a nasty kludge to allow companied to recoup R&D costs from times when that much computing power was expensive. It's becoming affordable now, and in a couple of years, no-one will even think about it. I'd rather wait a couple of years for the Human Genome Project to sort out the whole lot than have a company do it all in 4 months but prevent people working on it for the next 20 years.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Something can be patented and freely available. Actually patenting something does make it freely available, just not necessarily freely usable. A patent disclosure has to include all the details necessary for a person competent in the field to reproduce the work. You could still patent something and make it freely useable however, though the likelyhood that Dr Venter is doing this is vanishingly small.
But what the heck is he actually trying to patent? The Human Genome? That's just information. It's not a process, it's not a technique, it's not a thing as such. That's like me trying to patent a dictionary. Not the actual book, but the information contained in there.
It just doesn't make much sense. He can't be trying to patent the actual information, since he's going to sell it, type of thing.. My guess it that the patents are techniques for gaining the information that they invented and used.. sort of the bruce force methods they discuss in the article..
It'll never mean anything anyway. The genome would leak onto the internet faster than anything. The problem with selling something like that is that you can't prove that someone used your data when the copy gets leaked.
The story is crap, it doesn't make sense, I can't grasp it... argh! I hate badly written stories that don't make any sense!
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
just like although you can't patent gravity you can patent useful descriptions of gravity.
Can you though? Assume that Newton discovered gravity and his laws of motion today. What could he have patented?
1. Gravity itself - (hopefully) obviously not. As others have mentioned, there's always been gravity, etc, etc.
2. The descriptions (Gravity is...) - Do the same arguements apply to this as above?
3. His laws of motion. (Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, etc) - Can something like this be patented? Its a "useful description", which is (was) non obvious, but how could you infringe against this? Would someone who made, say, shock absorbers for cars be infringing this patent?
4. The mathematical equations - Since (IIRC) algorithms can be patented, could this be patented? ("A method for determining the force due to gravity between two objects"). Would this mean that anyone who uses this equation have to licence it in the same way RSA needs to be licenced?
5. Newton's cradle - this is obviously a physical thing, which probably could be patented. It can be used to "describe" gravity/forces in an easy-to-understand manner, so could this be patented?
What can be patented about an idea such as this?
What could become A Big Mess (TM) is what a gene patent actually means. It is not difficult to devise a DNA sequence that is different from the wild type that generates the exact same protein, or a slight variant with the same biological function. A bit farther in the future we will have more ways of generating proteins through protein engineering.
But wait, there's more. You can mass-produce the product of a gene without knowing or caring about its sequence or structure. Does the gene patent cover the product of a gene? I realize our patent system in the US is horribly broken but it is my understanding that patents are for specific processes, not for any process that serves a specific goal.
This issue reminds me of the need we have for formalizing defensive patents. A lot of companies issue patents simply to prevent others from doing so, and plan not to profit from them. Celera claims to be doing this, essentially. If there was only a way to guarantee that this were true, and prevent future management from reneging on the promise... then our lives might become a lot easier!
In any case, abusers of this system will eventually be frustrated with the progress of technology, as they are in other areas.
This is from a pull-together of summaries by Science Week on gene patenting stories. It is no longer on their site, but is cached on google at
htt p://www.google.com/search?q=cache:9485790&dq=cache :scienceweek.com/arch2.htm
The pull-together also includes several other summaries of on-topic stories.
The original article was in Science, 1 May 98 280:689, by John J. Doll (US Government), Director of Biotechnology Examination at the US Patent and Trademark Office
ON THE ADVANTAGES OF DNA PATENTING
In the international community of molecular biologists, a debate has been underway for some time concerning the patenting of DNA. Now John J. Doll (US Government), Director of Biotechnology Examination at the US Patent and Trademark Office presents the following points concerning this issue:
QY: John J. Doll, Technology Center 1600, USPTO, Washington, DC 20231 US.
(Science 1 May 98 280:689) (Science-Week 22 May 98)
For a contrary view, this position paper from the American Society of Human Genetics, on the earlier issue of expressed sequence tags is worth reading:
http://www.faseb.org/genetics/ ashg/policy/pol-08.htm
I don't understand how you can patent decoding something? Sure, the decoded data may be very valuable but it isn't your invention. It may be appropriate to patent the tools and techniques involved in the decoding process, but I don't understand how decoded data can be patented.
Suppose I decode the file format for Microsoft Office 2000? Can I then patent it? I'd love to have Microsoft have to pay me for reverse engineering their work but it doesn't seem realistic.
In the future I can see patenting DNA as a creation: specialized DNA which is the result of some large and expensive research and design process but even then as only a delta to some established DNA. You'd get a patent on the incremental improvement, not on the whole DNA structure.
The patent officers should ask themselves whether it would be appropriate to patent the image of man which would be roughly analogous to patenting its DNA.
Does this mean I'll have to pay royalties if my kids happen to have patented genes?
Am I misunderstanding that they're trying to patent the patterns within human DNA? Is that really what they're trying to do? Lay claim to gene sequences? Nucleotides?
If that's the case, when will someone pattent the unique hydrogen-oxygen arrangement of water molecules? That being the universal solvent should yield royalties up the wazoo!
Or maybe patent the unique structure of ozone - thereby collecting a huge fee from corporations that release ozone-destroying chemicals, for destroying private property.
Where is the common sense in the legal/patent system? Once a system becomes so full of loop-holes that it begins to resemble Swiss Cheese(TM) it should be Innovated(TM).
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Is it possible these efforts to patent Homo Sapiens's source code, along with "patent parasitism" from companies that don't make anything, overbroad software patents, and patenting ideas rather than products will actually hasten the death of the patent system?
All the above just demonstrate, to more and more people, that offline laws aren't right for the Net. In the sense that efforts like Celera's convince more people that it's wrong, it may lead to a complete overhaul of world legal systems sooner rather than later. And that would be a Good Thing.
Chris
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
No, it is not a big jump that way, patenting human genes have been going on for quite some time now, and the genes have also often been naturally occuring. OK, in agricultural cases they move a gene from one organism to another, but it is usually a naturally occuring gene anyway (designed proteins have a long way before they are useful).
Here is an example. An Italian researcher found that people in a small village had very low frequences of chardiovascular diseases. He found that the gene for a protein had a mutation and patented this. Today that patent is held by Esperion, and they are working on makeing a drug out of this discovery.
The big change here is that Celera can patent 6000 genes. The reason they can (try) to do that is because they want to patent predicted function. There is no way they can have worked out 6000 drug targets without prediction. And therein also lays one of the problems the Wellcome trust have with these patents.
Lars
--
Reality or nothing.
True, but the line gets a lot blurrier at so-called "intellectual property." Can an idea be patented? Look, for example, at the RSA algorithm. R, S, and A did not create it; they merely discovered it. Not only this, but they published it far and wide before ever even applying for any patents (that's why to this day you can find it in any decent text book on discrete mathematics and number theory).
Now, we get to the human genome. One could argue for "prior art"; after all, I can think of six billion examples currently in existence, and untold billions before that. But the fact is, do we really want someone patenting human genes? Or is this an abuse of the patent system which really doesn't do anything to protect inventors (which is the purpose of the patent system, not protecting business).
Let's put another way. Suppose I were to patent a process consisting of a two major devices (called a "protagonist" and an "antagonist") and a variable number of secondary devices (called "major and minor characters). This process describes an interaction between these devices, including both action and dialogue, and determines an outcome which affects all devices in the process. The process itself is usually documented in books, but can be documented by electronic means or even on motion-picture film.
I just tried, in other words, to patent stories. If I get this patent (which may actually be possible; hell, IBM patented the wheel), I've basically bound every non-technical writer in the country to come to me and pay before releasing any of their work. Is this right? Of course not. The patent does not reflect any work I did at all.
It's the same with human genes. It's nothing but raw data. There is no process described (perhaps pattenting the process by which the data was obtained is one thing, but this is not the case). The data was not even really the creation of the scientists; they merely studied it. Can you patent a piece of paper with some numbers written on it?
The same argument applies to software. Patenting an algorithm does not reflect the work of a company. What reflects the work of a company is its specific implementation of an algorithm (in other words, its code); this cannot be patented but copyrights provide adequate protection of intellectual property of this nature (and, at least when issued to individuals, they can last up to ten times longer than patents, not to mention that they're far less expensive).
I would have no objections is this company were merely patenting the process by which they got this data. That would be highly unscientific, of course (since it kills replication of the experiments, one of the cornerstones of real science), but certainly within their rights. If they copyrighted their data, I wouldn't object; might as well, if only to keep someone from messing with it and re-releasing it for whatever reason. To patent the data they obtained, though, is very different.
I've gone and checked out their site, and they don't mention patenting the genome sequences, but if you want to contact them, their contact page is at:
.htm back when DOS/Windows could not handle more than 3-character extensions reliably, but this is just silliness! Sigh.
http://www.celera.com/Compan yInformation/Contacts.shtm
And, on a technical note: ".shtm"?! What the hell is that?! People started using
Actually, it's a registered trademark. I took a photo of the sign when I was there (USENIX conference in Monterey), and the exact text is:
So, if we get Celera to sequence the Lone Cypress, who wins? :-)
Despite assurances earlier this year to the US Congress that Celera's discoveries would be freely available, Dr Venter is now seeking to patent more than 6,000 pieces of genetic information.
Ummm.. Isn't that technically purjury under US Law? I recall something like this.. not sure where I read that from, but the gist of it was you can't lie to congress for any reason, or something to that effect..
This only applies if he's a US citizen I suppose..
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
First off, HUGO, the Human Genome Project, will in any event publish this particular information in due course.
A discovery can reasobaly considered IP in some situations, and so can a description. For instance, the Ordinance Survey have the rights to their particular description of the topology of Britain. All they've done is draw something that everyone has access to, but they've drawn it in a particular way. The OS can sue me if I use their maps in a book without permission. They can't sue me if I use their maps to work out how tall a mountain is, and then put that information in my book. Nor can they sue me if I draw my own maps from my own observations.
What is Celera proposing? That no-one may every make use of the human genome data without their permission? Or are they simply saying that if they go to the trouble of describing the genome in a useful way, and packaging it up, that people will have to pay to get that package. If the latter, I see no problem.
If they are trying to patent the Genome itself, then its farcical. If they are trying to patent their tools for working it out, or their method of displaying it, or their tools for making it searchable, that's fine.
A particular description of something is patentable, the thing described isn't necessarily.
Now there are grey areas. Could the first person (it may have been the OS) to come of with the idea of contour lines have declared them IP? Well, that's a grey area, and that's the controversial area, but it's unclear to what extent Celera are trying to do something like that.
-----
Trade secrets are moraly preferable, since, unlike patents, they don't limit the freedom for other people to use information they have found for themselves.
In this case they are also practically preferable, since the human genome project will make the information available to everybody.