No, but only because patents last 17, not 20 years.
If you said 15 years, you could sue. You don't even need the DNA sequence. Plant hybrids themselves, especially those that are NOT genetically engineered, are patentable and have been for over a century.
You would be able to sue if you had consistently made an effort curb infringements on growing of your hybrids or making like hybridizations. Of course, you wouldn't be able to people for your own plantings, but you could sue surreptitious cultivators of your hybrids. Strange but true.
It would seem to me that CSS encoding represents
a software or device specifically designed to
interfere with my access to copyrighted works to
which I have right and license to access.
CSS is, prima facia, software designed to circumvent access controls (my hardware/software
reading the disk I purchased) intended to permit
me legal access to the DVD.
Why hasn't anyone filed a suit with that counterclaim? It seems like a fantastic class-action opportunity.
It is true that in "Origin of the Species" Darwin did not assert that man was descended from apes. However, in his later book, "the Descent of Man" he does speculate that man and great apes had a common ancestor.
For what it's worth. Darwin's ideas were not particularly new -- about 9000 years ealier ancient farmers already figured out that they can control phenotypes of subsequent generations of crops by careful selection of seed (the notion of artificial pollenation evaded them, however). Prior to Darwin, various monks had made "evolution-like" musings regarding man and the great apes (generally asserting deevolution towards the ape).
What really earned Darwin the spotlight was three-fold: his book was widely circulated, the subject matter was really hot for the time, and he was a Christian minister. The combination pushed his book into the "classics" category -- I think irregardless of his very keen observations and clear accounting of them.
For what it's worth... The process of natural selection isn't very disputable since it's a fundamental tool in various aspects of industrial and convservation biology as well as medicine. It's only recently though that we've begun to see the depth of the molecular basis for this selection and the biochemical interplay between organism and the environment. It's clear from modern genomics that evolution (at the molecular level) is not always as slow and deliberate as Darwin might have thought -- nor is fitness as simple as he first described.
I think it's a stretch to say man and apes (or all other mammals, for that matter) are not somehow related -- but whether that's by design or blind luck (and certain physical rules) doesn't really seem to present itself with any testable hypotheses. Personally, I like to think there's a creator, that Genesis is an allegorical synopsis of the descent of man, and that bickering over whether or not man descended from a lesser life form totally misses the point of both the scientific enquiry and the theological significance of the biblical account of creation. The bible means to tell you're beholden to the forces that made the universe for your very existence -- it's not a HOWTO on creating the universe. Imagine how inaccessible the bible would be if it started from probabilistic quantum mattery-energy discussion up through diagramming complex biological systems and beyond. Even if it did, nothing of philosophical significance would come of it -- and that's what the Bible quite specifically exists to provide.
First off, you'll note that you have an uphill battle on your hands. Clearly whoever decided on implementing use of the product is going to want to admit it's a failure -- further, complaints of kids carry depressingly little weight with anyone save an attentive parent.
My suggestion would be to find a sympathetic adult to go to the mat with you. It's absolutely necessary. It's almost tradition to dismiss cries of fould from students, but once a parent or respected member of the community makes clear that they won't leave until the matter's addressed --- that's a different storey. Select someone that will stick by you, is even tempered, eloquent, persuasive, and preferably connected. A teacher, librarian, youth group leader, or parent would be good choices.
For your part, start preparing a list of sites that get through and shouldn't, and sites that should get through but don't. Be prepared to demonstrate, and make sure that both are relevent (show the worst sites that get through, and the most educational sites that are blocked).
Finally, note that using a service that tracks
children's browsing could conceivably pose a tangible threat to the children. There's no way in telling who buys, or receives what information and how detailed it may be. Were the information to fall into the wrong hands (a local child molester wannabe), the results could be devastating. And if something like that ever happened (and it certainly will someday), don't think for a second that child's parents won't sue that town or the state right into bankruptcy court.
Under the DMCA, unauthorized analysis of a computer virus and development of a method of circumvention is explicitly illegal. While the author is not likely to file a civil complaint to obtain his $2500 in damages per-incident, the US federal government would be obliged to prosecute the product developers as trafficking in access control circumvention software. How much will your antivirus software cost if the developer needs to pay a million dollar fine for each counter-agent he develops?
All sorts of things have been patented. Most drug patents involve minimally the production procedure of the drug and the molecule itself. The USPTO recognizes patents on chemical compositions. For example: Searle makes a Cox-2 inhibitor named Celebrex. Searles patent covers both the manufacturing procedure and the compound itself. If you could develop an entirely unrelated organic synthesis procedure to produce the target molecule, you would still not be able to sell it as the molecule itself is protected.
It is true that entirely naturally occuring compounds are more or less unpatentable, but chemically modified versions or purification/separation techniques are not. Since most natually occurring pharmacologically compounds are toxic or have minimal efficacy in their natural state... you have to modify them. There are still ways, however, under US law, to patent not only the formulation, but the treatment based on the administration of the compound (modified or not), also effectively securing rights to use the compound (for whatever you claim).
Most drug companies are now aiming for drugs designed entirely synthetically or through genetic manipulation to target very specific molecular targets. None of the resulting compounds are known to occur in nature and all are patentable at the level of the molecule itself.
Re:Ban Patenting Non-Human Created Lifeforms
on
Squatting On Life
·
· Score: 1
Humans create other humans all the time. It can
actually be a very engaging process;)
All crop plants and most domestic animals are
also artifically created by humans (the vast majority through selective breeding or other random genetic modification procedures).
You've always been permitted to patent discoveries. The majority of chemical compounds for which patents have been issued have been isolated from nature (and, often, subsequent patents issued on chemical modifications thereof). The notion is that it's patentable because the "inventor" may not have initially created the compound, but he did recognize it, isolate it, and determine a use for it. Strange but true. In fact, very few patents issued in the past 100 years (in any country) cover something entirely novel -- just novel uses for existing things or modifications of existing things.
As for gene patents, there is a wide range of
them. The majority of genes (patented or otherwise), have a known (or likely) function assigned to them -- in part because it's hard to make the argument that something is a gene without providing evidence that it is (in fact, in the US you can't make such a claim without presenting the
evidence). All of the actual genes patented have a known function with one notable exception: cDNA sequences (expressed sequence tags).
ESTs are, by virtue of experimental design,
known to be sequences of expressed genes (at least transcribed DNA). About 3/4 of the ESTs you can
produce for a given organism will be readily assignable a putative function as well as info about tissues where the gene is expressed, conditions where the expression occurs, subcellular localization, often times it can even be assigned a place in a particular biochemical pathway. The value lies in the fact that the ESTs can be subsequently used to find tremendous amounts of information regarding regulatory pathways, co-expression, and eve, if you are clever, where the other 1/4 of uncharacterized ESTs come into the equiation. ESTs can also be used as the basis of a slew of technologies that
permit researches to visualize the differential activity of all genes in an organism in response to environmental and developmental factors. ESTs themselves can even produce simple drug targets. This type of information and the systems built up around it are probably justifiably patentable.
That said, many corporations patent large collections of genomic sequences as well as ESTs. This is raw DNA from the organism that has been sequenced in tiny pieces and the tiny pieces assembled into large chunks. Why? Well, not every gene is expressed in high enough levels to be readibly detectable in EST libraries and if you
want to find them, you need the genomic sequence. The genomic sequence also gives you information about the spatial arrangement of genes, large scale structure of information storage including synteny (where a huge chunk of one genome appears in another genome but rearrangements), colocation of genes (genes in similar pathways tend to congregate), mapping mutations, etc. Genomic information can, if properly handled, also be
used to contribute to gene discovery and the whole-genome profiling of gene expression.
I suppose the question is whether or not the inherent an immediate utility of sequence information to molecular biologists and bioinformaticists meets the minimal requirements for patentability. I would say that in the US the answer would be yes, since the information represents an act of discovery (the sequences) and creation (all the sequences are man-made constructs derived from natural sources and annotated in machine-readable form) for which there exists a working model (the constructed libraries and subsequent information derived tehre from) and a definable utility (sometimes a target for drug discovery, but predominantly the utility is for conducting sequence-based research).
That said... I also beleive that there are many technical grounds upon which someone can essentially generate a parallel set of libraries and information and claim they have something new, and defense against that might be tricky. I'm not sure whether spending the cash to patent all of this information is worth while. Though I'm certain it's beneficial to the consumer since the information becomes public knowledge through the
patent process rather than allow companies to conduct genetic entirely out of public view.
Ref: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fedreg/65fr64555.html
Please note that this determination affirms a federal court ruling (NY)
that it is a violation of the DMCA to view a work, even if the viewer
has license to access the work, with software other than that which
the author of the work allows (even if not stipulated in the license
a priori which software is accessible).
As such, please note that the US copyright office has been in
continuous violation of the DMCA since its inception by recieving
encoded data in the form of e-mails, decrypting them, viewing them,
and even reposting them without the consent of the authors. While
sending the note to the LOC may constitute license to use the
work, without express prior consent of the author as to the methods
used to access the work, the federal government has engaged in
systematic circumvention of access controls on those works (for example,
ASCII text is not readable by humans without an intermediary piece
of software to render it in readable form -- the courts have already
adjudicated that neither the underlying quality of the access control
measure, nor license to use the work are to be considered with
regard to whether the user circumvented the access controls).
Further, it has come to my attention that the Library of Congress
has in place a system of software programs explicitly designed to
circumvent digital encryption measures including e-mail applications,
FAX software, WWW browsers, TCP/IP protocol stacks, spreadsheets,
word processors, databases, graphics programs, print protocols,
data compression and data encryption tools, etc., all of which are
capable of accessing, copying, and transmitting digital documents
in a manner that may be inconsistent with the author's wishes. I
would encourage the Library of Congress to set a good example and
stop using any and all software that deals with accessing any form of
digital information not produced by a Library of Congress employee
until each of the work's authors can be contacted with regards to
the terms an conditions of access to the work can be determined.
For future reference, this message may be accessed on any
general purpose or embedded device using any UNIX or Linux
operating system with the aid of software running under that
operating system. Accessing the work with any software other
than that stipulated above will be construed as a violation
of the access restriction provisions of the DMCA.
The same access limitation applies to all previous correspondence.
If you care to read on through the link in the
announcement, you'd find the following in the SAMBA-TNG FAQ:
TNG stands for 'The Next Generation'. At the time of writing, Samba TNG will never
officially be released. It will be merged into the Stable Samba branch, which will
become Samba 3. Samba TNG is not recommended for production use, but once it is
working, you shouldn't see too many stability problems.
... which sounds a lot more like a development side bar than a fork...
A Method For Securing Extended Patent-level Intellectual Property Protection on Non-inventions
A central limitation of US patent law is the short duration of patents, and the limited number of classes of things that may be patented. The method specified herein describes a business model that utilizes the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and careful contractual arrangements to secure a protracted (35 years to 150 years) monopoly rights to anything: including but not limited to, concepts, file storage formats, methods of communication, business models, and international trade policy.
In this model, the person or agency seeking the aforementioned protection fixes the concepts or
embodiments thereof onto a fixed medium as defined by US copyright law using any digital method of data storage. As an arbitrarily encoded stream of digital information, the fixed expression of the
concept is imperceptable without the aid of a method for translation (access) into human perceivable form and thus an perception requires technological means to access it. This embodiment, itself a device, is thus rendered illegal to come into contact with or be perceived by any person or mechanical implement except per any explicit and arbitrary terms defined a priori OR a posteriori by the party so seeking protection. Anyone not abiding the terms of said party are committing a felony and subject to criminal penalties. Reverse engineering is thuse also rendered impossible since reverse engineering would imply require prior access to said material, itself a felony.
Further, the design, conceptualization, or mere communication thereof of any technology or method for accessing the protected item is also a felony. Further, unlike patents, the access protection last as long as a copyright (much longer than
a typical patent), and the because the person or agency has the right to squelch communication related to the underlying accessibility, including technology, encoding, file format, language, numerical system, symbology, or fundamental concepts -- any and all critique, undesirable use, use by undesirable persons, use by foreign persons, et cetera can be effectively and lawfully disposed of.
This method is immediately applicable to all things expressible including but not limited to books, films, personal opinions, information private and public, performances, methods of business, historical documents, cultural traditions, and collections.
Prior art: ref. Motion Picture Association of America (Jack Valenti); Recording Industry Association of America; S. Milosevic; V. Lenin; A. Hitler.
If you feel that the scope of the application
exceeds anything that you invented while at the
company, you need to basically state that plainly with suggested revisions to bring appropriate scope to the invention.
If your employer gets overzealous in the claims,
as the inventor it's your job to point out that
what you know of related prior art and see that
it's properly cited in the application. Like wise,
you must also be careful not to take credit for
any part of an invention that you yourself did not
invent. Keep sending back the application until
you believe it to accurately reflect your contribution (and that of coinventors) along with the current state of the prior art. Don't jump
to conclusion about what might be "obvious" to
one that's skilled in the art -- the patent office just means that nobody has done it before.
That said... You'd be surprised what's patentable.
Just because it seems stupid or overbroad you
should not dismiss the patentability of something
on those grounds. If it's truly silly, the patent will be turned down or ultimately be overruled (and if the company's willing to pay for that, let them). Also, patents, even stupid ones, look pretty good on the resume (if nothing else, because it shows you're familiar with IP considerations and because you're a "team player"
and, presumably, technically savvy).
On one page they list that only Tru64 Unix on
an Alpha platform is certified, while their FAQ
lists Solaris 7, HP/UX, and NT4.
However, Linux adheres mcuh more closely to their
standards than NT4 (actually, how NT4 got there
I don't know as it seems to fail the POSIX requirements amon other things).
I think the initial problem was that Linux didn't have a vendor to assure compliance and as such could not qualify. FWIW - I also believe that the
DII/COE guidelines are being ammended to take that
sort of situation into account (specifically because a wide number of vendors and contractors are pushing it).
Finally there will be precedent... Soon we can
all file suit against the Library Bureau and
the American Library Association for the damage
caused by their meddling founder, Melvil Dewey, who invented a numerical classification system for
books (and other media) that makes it easy to
catalog and access megatons (literally) of
copyrighted material. Down with card catalogs!
Can you imagine the Library of Congress' reaction
when next year, under the auspices of the WIPO,
they are confronted with a global class-action
lawsuit for maintaining their catalog!? People of
Earth v. US Library of Congress!
Every year thousands of school children all across the US have simple access to pronographic materials like "Catcher in the Rye" and such because of such indexing systems. It's nice to see this madness is finally coming to an end.
"Windows 2000 performs just as good as products that are infinitely cheaper -- If you're already buying new hardware, why not get the software that will maximize the use of those resources, um...!"
I like reading the responses to GM and IP issues on Slashdot, just to get a feel for the public opinion on such things... I'll preface this response with the caveat that I'm a computational biologist and as a result work with many groups involved with most aspects of these issues.
One thing the article doesn't make entirely clear is the types of patents being issued or how they work in Mexico. In the United States, for example, there is a class of patent specifically related to hybrid plants and animals -- without any form of genetic engineering. Simply discovering or cultivating a new species or subspecies is sufficient to obtain patent rights to it. Most hybrid crops and many popular flowering plants and shrubs fall into this category. (Strangely enough, these "natural" hybrids are quite often quite harmful to the environment and humans; africanized "killer" bees are one good example).
Contrary to popular belief, companies do not patent genetically modified crops, but rather the use of a transgene (gene transplanted from a different strain or species), the process by which it is used, the system in which it is used (for example, glyphosate anabolism), etc. The notion there being that such are basically chemical process patents.
Also, patenting existing chemical substances and modifications to same is a time honored tradition as old as the patent process itself. It's not likely to change. This is how we got the dyes in our clothes (the clothes themselves if you've your polyester leisure suit on), the majority of the modern pharmacopia, et cetera. As sad as it is to say, without profit or war as motivators, there would be insufficient motive to develop technology that requires substantial research or development.
Were we talking about the US, there would be no need to patent information which you published in the public domain for defensive purposes, since doing so eliminates subsequent claims by prior art. I don't know if this is true in Mexico. What the article is describing is the just-in-case scenario whereby things that are of general benefit are released to the public but if there is a significant commercial interest, then the technology can be licensed for profit. It sounds fine except that farmers are not molecular biologists and generally the technology is useless without an implementor (generally a corporation), and the middle-man approach just adds to the cost for subsequent customers.
Genetically modified seed and hybrid seed are not, contrary to the assertion of one poster, typically more expensive. They are per pound of seed, but typically the enhanced traits generate yields that more than compensate. The higher profitability of growing engineered crops is what keeps farmers planting them (at least outside the thrid world). In some areas, growing GM crops can cost as little as 1/3 as much to produce as regular crops. Over the past few years, the costs of seed has gone down significantly.
In fact, it's that GM crops are so economical which is the real problem for those opposing GMO's. It's one thing to support conventional or organic farming, but it's very difficult to get farmers to fall in line when it means cutting into their profits and potentially destroying their soil (both organic and conventional farming are extremely destructive, in comparison, due to tillage and chemical use). It also makes it hard for third-world farmers to compete in exports as they often do not have the capital to outlay for seed, and they can't produce as high a grade of crop.
Now, most seed companies make their hybrid and GMO seed available in third-world countries for little or no cost (though some GMOs are really only advantageous if you make use certain fertilizers, herbicides, etc. also sold by the seed vendor). This too has proven disasterous for the control of distribution of GM seed because many times it is received at no cost and then resold by the farmer. This has been especially true in South America of late.
Ironically, the uncurbed distribution of GMO seed probably would have been halted by a technology developed by, I think, Pioneer Hi-Bred of France: the so-called "Terminator" technology (which Monsanto got credit for, despite never having licensed it, much less developing it) which renders the GM seed sterile. Initially this was attacked because it was hyped by anti-GM groups as being a threat because it could render the worlds crops sterile by giving birth to sterile offspring:) . It later occurred to everyone that sterile crops don't have any offspring, much less sterile ones. Ultimately, it was seen as a technology that could be used to exploit third-world farmers by forcing them to buy seeds anew each year (which it could be used for -- US and european farmers already do this as a matter of course), and possibly rub out subsistence farmers. It goes without saying that no company wanted their names associated with that and I'm pretty sure the vendor was never able to license the technology.
Granted, the food may not be harmful to eat, and by all measure so far, GM plants have yet to show any environmental impact (in the US and Europe they've been in wide use for about 20 years; because of blight problems, nearly all US potatos are GM), but it's still a concern for people and is likely to be same for some time. I can't imagine that it will be practical to educate the populous sufficiently that they would have sufficient background to make an informed decision (right now, the vast majority of detractors and supporters of GM technologies have no particular knowledge of the subject save propaganda or paranoia). In that case, I imagine that the technology will take some time to gain general acceptance, but I'm sure it will unless somebody produces some evidence that the risks of GM tech exceeds the benefits (or even exceeds the risk of natural genetic variation).
Patenting human genes is also an intriguing subject. Obviously you cannot patent a gene without and ascribed function since you need to show utility and a prototype of it's use. What you could attempt to patent would be the methods used for isolating specific genes or products that target the functionality of the gene (to date, many companies have patented collections of gene candidates as parts of a trait/drug target screening process - the "gene" themselves are not in themselves patentable, at least in the US). For example, Taq DNA polymerase (an enzyme from Thermophilus aquaticus used to replicate DNA with high fidelity using a technique called PCR), is the subject of several patents. The gene itself is not patented, because it can't be, but the applications for using it for PCR (and several other uses) is patented. If you want to use Taq for another use, say as a paint additive or cancer cure, then you'd be free to do so (and patent it).
Also, on the GATTACA front, it should probably be pointed out that there are physical constraints to the human genome that would make it functionally impossible to do that sort of trait expression engineering (you could optimize for a few traits, but the interdepdence of traits on common signals, pathways, etc. precludes a generalized method for specifying aribtrary phenotypes).
FWIW - Celera had annouced that they finished the fruitfly genome over a year ago... But they didn't actually have the sequence to back up the claim until last month.
As far as validating the shotgun approach, they still have horrendous problems anchoring their sequence. They've pretty much proven that they can get much of the way shotgunning, but that they can't handle repeats very well. They've pretty much proven that you can't finish a genome using pure shotgunning, but most everyone felt that way to begin with.
That humans and fruit-flies share considerable sequence homology is also not very surprising.
As far as releasing the sequence to the public... There really isn't much reason not to. Not so many are interested in Drosophila except as a model organism, and the public sequencing effort has made tremendous headway. Celera itself is suffering pretty poor press and their stock has been pummeled lately (worse, they have a high employee turnover and suffering a sort of "brain drain"). I think releasing their Drosophila sequence and annotation was most valuable to them as a public relations gesture.
FWIW Watson and Crick did nothing to cover up Ms. Franklin's contribution to discovering the the double-helical structure of DNA. In fact, they very often acknowledge her role. The problem stems from the fact that she did not receive the Nobel prize along with Watson and Crick. Why? Because by the time Watson and Crick were nominated Ms. Franklin had already died and the Nobel committee does not (even to this day) give out posthumous awards. What did Ms. Franklin die of? Apparently of long-term exposure to x-rays (as was often the case with x-ray crystallographers before they learned to better respect radiation).
For what it is worth, the laws of both the US and England require that the information be made public because public research money was used to fund the project. Additionally, the projected was chartered to make all of the information publicly available.
At issue before was whether or not Craig Venter and Celera Genomics were going to release their version publically and their annotations (which they probably won't), and whether Venter has any intellectual property on which he can obtain patents (which he probably doesn't).
Celera currently has sequence which are not part of the public record sequence yet, but will be shortly. Celera's sequence is badly fragmented and since Celera currently uses shotgun seuencing alone, they're probably having some trouble anchoring the sequence fragments and finishing it, something they won't be able to do before the public effort (but that they could partly do now by using the public information -- greatly decreasing their IP position).
Finally, the Human Genome Project has additional iimportant informations regarding allelic variation and single-nucleotide polymorphisms obtained through sequencing multiple people's DNA as opposed to Celera's ostensibly quicker approach of sequencing the DNA of a single person (Craig Venter himself). I'd really be amazed if Celera will see mcuh profit from its human genome sequencing effort.
Anyway, the point was that the HGP information was always destined to be released into the public domain, there wasn't even a question about it. It's nice for Clinton and Blair to take credit for it, but they didn't do anything. Release of the information still won't cover IP related to genes not identified or detrimental genetic mutations/ variants that cause disease, the majority of which the HGP will not capture. However, the HGP information will make such things far easier to find in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Either FreeBSD or Linux would make suitable replacements for Win2K/NT file servers in this respect.
If you said 15 years, you could sue. You don't even need the DNA sequence. Plant hybrids themselves, especially those that are NOT genetically engineered, are patentable and have been for over a century.
You would be able to sue if you had consistently made an effort curb infringements on growing of your hybrids or making like hybridizations. Of course, you wouldn't be able to people for your own plantings, but you could sue surreptitious cultivators of your hybrids. Strange but true.
CSS is, prima facia, software designed to circumvent access controls (my hardware/software reading the disk I purchased) intended to permit me legal access to the DVD.
Why hasn't anyone filed a suit with that counterclaim? It seems like a fantastic class-action opportunity.
For what it's worth. Darwin's ideas were not particularly new -- about 9000 years ealier ancient farmers already figured out that they can control phenotypes of subsequent generations of crops by careful selection of seed (the notion of artificial pollenation evaded them, however). Prior to Darwin, various monks had made "evolution-like" musings regarding man and the great apes (generally asserting deevolution towards the ape).
What really earned Darwin the spotlight was three-fold: his book was widely circulated, the subject matter was really hot for the time, and he was a Christian minister. The combination pushed his book into the "classics" category -- I think irregardless of his very keen observations and clear accounting of them.
For what it's worth... The process of natural selection isn't very disputable since it's a fundamental tool in various aspects of industrial and convservation biology as well as medicine. It's only recently though that we've begun to see the depth of the molecular basis for this selection and the biochemical interplay between organism and the environment. It's clear from modern genomics that evolution (at the molecular level) is not always as slow and deliberate as Darwin might have thought -- nor is fitness as simple as he first described.
I think it's a stretch to say man and apes (or all other mammals, for that matter) are not somehow related -- but whether that's by design or blind luck (and certain physical rules) doesn't really seem to present itself with any testable hypotheses. Personally, I like to think there's a creator, that Genesis is an allegorical synopsis of the descent of man, and that bickering over whether or not man descended from a lesser life form totally misses the point of both the scientific enquiry and the theological significance of the biblical account of creation. The bible means to tell you're beholden to the forces that made the universe for your very existence -- it's not a HOWTO on creating the universe. Imagine how inaccessible the bible would be if it started from probabilistic quantum mattery-energy discussion up through diagramming complex biological systems and beyond. Even if it did, nothing of philosophical significance would come of it -- and that's what the Bible quite specifically exists to provide.
My suggestion would be to find a sympathetic adult to go to the mat with you. It's absolutely necessary. It's almost tradition to dismiss cries of fould from students, but once a parent or respected member of the community makes clear that they won't leave until the matter's addressed --- that's a different storey. Select someone that will stick by you, is even tempered, eloquent, persuasive, and preferably connected. A teacher, librarian, youth group leader, or parent would be good choices.
For your part, start preparing a list of sites that get through and shouldn't, and sites that should get through but don't. Be prepared to demonstrate, and make sure that both are relevent (show the worst sites that get through, and the most educational sites that are blocked).
Finally, note that using a service that tracks children's browsing could conceivably pose a tangible threat to the children. There's no way in telling who buys, or receives what information and how detailed it may be. Were the information to fall into the wrong hands (a local child molester wannabe), the results could be devastating. And if something like that ever happened (and it certainly will someday), don't think for a second that child's parents won't sue that town or the state right into bankruptcy court.
Under the DMCA, unauthorized analysis of a computer virus and development of a method of circumvention is explicitly illegal. While the author is not likely to file a civil complaint to obtain his $2500 in damages per-incident, the US federal government would be obliged to prosecute the product developers as trafficking in access control circumvention software. How much will your antivirus software cost if the developer needs to pay a million dollar fine for each counter-agent he develops?
All sorts of things have been patented. Most drug patents involve minimally the production procedure of the drug and the molecule itself. The USPTO recognizes patents on chemical compositions. For example: Searle makes a Cox-2 inhibitor named Celebrex. Searles patent covers both the manufacturing procedure and the compound itself. If you could develop an entirely unrelated organic synthesis procedure to produce the target molecule, you would still not be able to sell it as the molecule itself is protected.
It is true that entirely naturally occuring compounds are more or less unpatentable, but chemically modified versions or purification/separation techniques are not. Since most natually occurring pharmacologically compounds are toxic or have minimal efficacy in their natural state... you have to modify them. There are still ways, however, under US law, to patent not only the formulation, but the treatment based on the administration of the compound (modified or not), also effectively securing rights to use the compound (for whatever you claim).
Most drug companies are now aiming for drugs designed entirely synthetically or through genetic manipulation to target very specific molecular targets. None of the resulting compounds are known to occur in nature and all are patentable at the level of the molecule itself.
Humans create other humans all the time. It can actually be a very engaging process ;)
All crop plants and most domestic animals are also artifically created by humans (the vast majority through selective breeding or other random genetic modification procedures).
You've always been permitted to patent discoveries. The majority of chemical compounds for which patents have been issued have been isolated from nature (and, often, subsequent patents issued on chemical modifications thereof). The notion is that it's patentable because the "inventor" may not have initially created the compound, but he did recognize it, isolate it, and determine a use for it. Strange but true. In fact, very few patents issued in the past 100 years (in any country) cover something entirely novel -- just novel uses for existing things or modifications of existing things.
As for gene patents, there is a wide range of them. The majority of genes (patented or otherwise), have a known (or likely) function assigned to them -- in part because it's hard to make the argument that something is a gene without providing evidence that it is (in fact, in the US you can't make such a claim without presenting the evidence). All of the actual genes patented have a known function with one notable exception: cDNA sequences (expressed sequence tags).
ESTs are, by virtue of experimental design, known to be sequences of expressed genes (at least transcribed DNA). About 3/4 of the ESTs you can produce for a given organism will be readily assignable a putative function as well as info about tissues where the gene is expressed, conditions where the expression occurs, subcellular localization, often times it can even be assigned a place in a particular biochemical pathway. The value lies in the fact that the ESTs can be subsequently used to find tremendous amounts of information regarding regulatory pathways, co-expression, and eve, if you are clever, where the other 1/4 of uncharacterized ESTs come into the equiation. ESTs can also be used as the basis of a slew of technologies that permit researches to visualize the differential activity of all genes in an organism in response to environmental and developmental factors. ESTs themselves can even produce simple drug targets. This type of information and the systems built up around it are probably justifiably patentable.
That said, many corporations patent large collections of genomic sequences as well as ESTs. This is raw DNA from the organism that has been sequenced in tiny pieces and the tiny pieces assembled into large chunks. Why? Well, not every gene is expressed in high enough levels to be readibly detectable in EST libraries and if you want to find them, you need the genomic sequence. The genomic sequence also gives you information about the spatial arrangement of genes, large scale structure of information storage including synteny (where a huge chunk of one genome appears in another genome but rearrangements), colocation of genes (genes in similar pathways tend to congregate), mapping mutations, etc. Genomic information can, if properly handled, also be used to contribute to gene discovery and the whole-genome profiling of gene expression.
I suppose the question is whether or not the inherent an immediate utility of sequence information to molecular biologists and bioinformaticists meets the minimal requirements for patentability. I would say that in the US the answer would be yes, since the information represents an act of discovery (the sequences) and creation (all the sequences are man-made constructs derived from natural sources and annotated in machine-readable form) for which there exists a working model (the constructed libraries and subsequent information derived tehre from) and a definable utility (sometimes a target for drug discovery, but predominantly the utility is for conducting sequence-based research).
That said... I also beleive that there are many technical grounds upon which someone can essentially generate a parallel set of libraries and information and claim they have something new, and defense against that might be tricky. I'm not sure whether spending the cash to patent all of this information is worth while. Though I'm certain it's beneficial to the consumer since the information becomes public knowledge through the patent process rather than allow companies to conduct genetic entirely out of public view.
Ref: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fedreg/65fr64555.html
Please note that this determination affirms a federal court ruling (NY) that it is a violation of the DMCA to view a work, even if the viewer has license to access the work, with software other than that which the author of the work allows (even if not stipulated in the license a priori which software is accessible).
As such, please note that the US copyright office has been in continuous violation of the DMCA since its inception by recieving encoded data in the form of e-mails, decrypting them, viewing them, and even reposting them without the consent of the authors. While sending the note to the LOC may constitute license to use the work, without express prior consent of the author as to the methods used to access the work, the federal government has engaged in systematic circumvention of access controls on those works (for example, ASCII text is not readable by humans without an intermediary piece of software to render it in readable form -- the courts have already adjudicated that neither the underlying quality of the access control measure, nor license to use the work are to be considered with regard to whether the user circumvented the access controls).
Further, it has come to my attention that the Library of Congress has in place a system of software programs explicitly designed to circumvent digital encryption measures including e-mail applications, FAX software, WWW browsers, TCP/IP protocol stacks, spreadsheets, word processors, databases, graphics programs, print protocols, data compression and data encryption tools, etc., all of which are capable of accessing, copying, and transmitting digital documents in a manner that may be inconsistent with the author's wishes. I would encourage the Library of Congress to set a good example and stop using any and all software that deals with accessing any form of digital information not produced by a Library of Congress employee until each of the work's authors can be contacted with regards to the terms an conditions of access to the work can be determined.
For future reference, this message may be accessed on any general purpose or embedded device using any UNIX or Linux operating system with the aid of software running under that operating system. Accessing the work with any software other than that stipulated above will be construed as a violation of the access restriction provisions of the DMCA.
The same access limitation applies to all previous correspondence.
A Method For Securing Extended Patent-level Intellectual Property Protection on Non-inventions
A central limitation of US patent law is the short duration of patents, and the limited number of classes of things that may be patented. The method specified herein describes a business model that utilizes the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and careful contractual arrangements to secure a protracted (35 years to 150 years) monopoly rights to anything: including but not limited to, concepts, file storage formats, methods of communication, business models, and international trade policy.
In this model, the person or agency seeking the aforementioned protection fixes the concepts or embodiments thereof onto a fixed medium as defined by US copyright law using any digital method of data storage. As an arbitrarily encoded stream of digital information, the fixed expression of the concept is imperceptable without the aid of a method for translation (access) into human perceivable form and thus an perception requires technological means to access it. This embodiment, itself a device, is thus rendered illegal to come into contact with or be perceived by any person or mechanical implement except per any explicit and arbitrary terms defined a priori OR a posteriori by the party so seeking protection. Anyone not abiding the terms of said party are committing a felony and subject to criminal penalties. Reverse engineering is thuse also rendered impossible since reverse engineering would imply require prior access to said material, itself a felony.
Further, the design, conceptualization, or mere communication thereof of any technology or method for accessing the protected item is also a felony. Further, unlike patents, the access protection last as long as a copyright (much longer than a typical patent), and the because the person or agency has the right to squelch communication related to the underlying accessibility, including technology, encoding, file format, language, numerical system, symbology, or fundamental concepts -- any and all critique, undesirable use, use by undesirable persons, use by foreign persons, et cetera can be effectively and lawfully disposed of.
This method is immediately applicable to all things expressible including but not limited to books, films, personal opinions, information private and public, performances, methods of business, historical documents, cultural traditions, and collections.
Prior art: ref. Motion Picture Association of America (Jack Valenti); Recording Industry Association of America; S. Milosevic; V. Lenin; A. Hitler.
If your employer gets overzealous in the claims, as the inventor it's your job to point out that what you know of related prior art and see that it's properly cited in the application. Like wise, you must also be careful not to take credit for any part of an invention that you yourself did not invent. Keep sending back the application until you believe it to accurately reflect your contribution (and that of coinventors) along with the current state of the prior art. Don't jump to conclusion about what might be "obvious" to one that's skilled in the art -- the patent office just means that nobody has done it before.
That said... You'd be surprised what's patentable. Just because it seems stupid or overbroad you should not dismiss the patentability of something on those grounds. If it's truly silly, the patent will be turned down or ultimately be overruled (and if the company's willing to pay for that, let them). Also, patents, even stupid ones, look pretty good on the resume (if nothing else, because it shows you're familiar with IP considerations and because you're a "team player" and, presumably, technically savvy).
However, Linux adheres mcuh more closely to their standards than NT4 (actually, how NT4 got there I don't know as it seems to fail the POSIX requirements amon other things).
I think the initial problem was that Linux didn't have a vendor to assure compliance and as such could not qualify. FWIW - I also believe that the DII/COE guidelines are being ammended to take that sort of situation into account (specifically because a wide number of vendors and contractors are pushing it).
Can you imagine the Library of Congress' reaction when next year, under the auspices of the WIPO, they are confronted with a global class-action lawsuit for maintaining their catalog!? People of Earth v. US Library of Congress!
Every year thousands of school children all across the US have simple access to pronographic materials like "Catcher in the Rye" and such because of such indexing systems. It's nice to see this madness is finally coming to an end.
One thing the article doesn't make entirely clear is the types of patents being issued or how they work in Mexico. In the United States, for example, there is a class of patent specifically related to hybrid plants and animals -- without any form of genetic engineering. Simply discovering or cultivating a new species or subspecies is sufficient to obtain patent rights to it. Most hybrid crops and many popular flowering plants and shrubs fall into this category. (Strangely enough, these "natural" hybrids are quite often quite harmful to the environment and humans; africanized "killer" bees are one good example).
Contrary to popular belief, companies do not patent genetically modified crops, but rather the use of a transgene (gene transplanted from a different strain or species), the process by which it is used, the system in which it is used (for example, glyphosate anabolism), etc. The notion there being that such are basically chemical process patents.
Also, patenting existing chemical substances and modifications to same is a time honored tradition as old as the patent process itself. It's not likely to change. This is how we got the dyes in our clothes (the clothes themselves if you've your polyester leisure suit on), the majority of the modern pharmacopia, et cetera. As sad as it is to say, without profit or war as motivators, there would be insufficient motive to develop technology that requires substantial research or development.
Were we talking about the US, there would be no need to patent information which you published in the public domain for defensive purposes, since doing so eliminates subsequent claims by prior art. I don't know if this is true in Mexico. What the article is describing is the just-in-case scenario whereby things that are of general benefit are released to the public but if there is a significant commercial interest, then the technology can be licensed for profit. It sounds fine except that farmers are not molecular biologists and generally the technology is useless without an implementor (generally a corporation), and the middle-man approach just adds to the cost for subsequent customers.
Genetically modified seed and hybrid seed are not, contrary to the assertion of one poster, typically more expensive. They are per pound of seed, but typically the enhanced traits generate yields that more than compensate. The higher profitability of growing engineered crops is what keeps farmers planting them (at least outside the thrid world). In some areas, growing GM crops can cost as little as 1/3 as much to produce as regular crops. Over the past few years, the costs of seed has gone down significantly.
In fact, it's that GM crops are so economical which is the real problem for those opposing GMO's. It's one thing to support conventional or organic farming, but it's very difficult to get farmers to fall in line when it means cutting into their profits and potentially destroying their soil (both organic and conventional farming are extremely destructive, in comparison, due to tillage and chemical use). It also makes it hard for third-world farmers to compete in exports as they often do not have the capital to outlay for seed, and they can't produce as high a grade of crop.
Now, most seed companies make their hybrid and GMO seed available in third-world countries for little or no cost (though some GMOs are really only advantageous if you make use certain fertilizers, herbicides, etc. also sold by the seed vendor). This too has proven disasterous for the control of distribution of GM seed because many times it is received at no cost and then resold by the farmer. This has been especially true in South America of late.
Ironically, the uncurbed distribution of GMO seed probably would have been halted by a technology developed by, I think, Pioneer Hi-Bred of France: the so-called "Terminator" technology (which Monsanto got credit for, despite never having licensed it, much less developing it) which renders the GM seed sterile. Initially this was attacked because it was hyped by anti-GM groups as being a threat because it could render the worlds crops sterile by giving birth to sterile offspring :) . It later occurred to everyone that sterile crops don't have any offspring, much less sterile ones. Ultimately, it was seen as a technology that could be used to exploit third-world farmers by forcing them to buy seeds anew each year (which it could be used for -- US and european farmers already do this as a matter of course), and possibly rub out subsistence farmers. It goes without saying that no company wanted their names associated with that and I'm pretty sure the vendor was never able to license the technology.
Granted, the food may not be harmful to eat, and by all measure so far, GM plants have yet to show any environmental impact (in the US and Europe they've been in wide use for about 20 years; because of blight problems, nearly all US potatos are GM), but it's still a concern for people and is likely to be same for some time. I can't imagine that it will be practical to educate the populous sufficiently that they would have sufficient background to make an informed decision (right now, the vast majority of detractors and supporters of GM technologies have no particular knowledge of the subject save propaganda or paranoia). In that case, I imagine that the technology will take some time to gain general acceptance, but I'm sure it will unless somebody produces some evidence that the risks of GM tech exceeds the benefits (or even exceeds the risk of natural genetic variation).
Patenting human genes is also an intriguing subject. Obviously you cannot patent a gene without and ascribed function since you need to show utility and a prototype of it's use. What you could attempt to patent would be the methods used for isolating specific genes or products that target the functionality of the gene (to date, many companies have patented collections of gene candidates as parts of a trait/drug target screening process - the "gene" themselves are not in themselves patentable, at least in the US). For example, Taq DNA polymerase (an enzyme from Thermophilus aquaticus used to replicate DNA with high fidelity using a technique called PCR), is the subject of several patents. The gene itself is not patented, because it can't be, but the applications for using it for PCR (and several other uses) is patented. If you want to use Taq for another use, say as a paint additive or cancer cure, then you'd be free to do so (and patent it).
Also, on the GATTACA front, it should probably be pointed out that there are physical constraints to the human genome that would make it functionally impossible to do that sort of trait expression engineering (you could optimize for a few traits, but the interdepdence of traits on common signals, pathways, etc. precludes a generalized method for specifying aribtrary phenotypes).
As far as validating the shotgun approach, they still have horrendous problems anchoring their sequence. They've pretty much proven that they can get much of the way shotgunning, but that they can't handle repeats very well. They've pretty much proven that you can't finish a genome using pure shotgunning, but most everyone felt that way to begin with.
That humans and fruit-flies share considerable sequence homology is also not very surprising.
As far as releasing the sequence to the public... There really isn't much reason not to. Not so many are interested in Drosophila except as a model organism, and the public sequencing effort has made tremendous headway. Celera itself is suffering pretty poor press and their stock has been pummeled lately (worse, they have a high employee turnover and suffering a sort of "brain drain"). I think releasing their Drosophila sequence and annotation was most valuable to them as a public relations gesture.
FWIW Watson and Crick did nothing to cover up Ms. Franklin's contribution to discovering the the double-helical structure of DNA. In fact, they very often acknowledge her role. The problem stems from the fact that she did not receive the Nobel prize along with Watson and Crick. Why? Because by the time Watson and Crick were nominated Ms. Franklin had already died and the Nobel committee does not (even to this day) give out posthumous awards. What did Ms. Franklin die of? Apparently of long-term exposure to x-rays (as was often the case with x-ray crystallographers before they learned to better respect radiation).
At issue before was whether or not Craig Venter and Celera Genomics were going to release their version publically and their annotations (which they probably won't), and whether Venter has any intellectual property on which he can obtain patents (which he probably doesn't).
Celera currently has sequence which are not part of the public record sequence yet, but will be shortly. Celera's sequence is badly fragmented and since Celera currently uses shotgun seuencing alone, they're probably having some trouble anchoring the sequence fragments and finishing it, something they won't be able to do before the public effort (but that they could partly do now by using the public information -- greatly decreasing their IP position).
Finally, the Human Genome Project has additional iimportant informations regarding allelic variation and single-nucleotide polymorphisms obtained through sequencing multiple people's DNA as opposed to Celera's ostensibly quicker approach of sequencing the DNA of a single person (Craig Venter himself). I'd really be amazed if Celera will see mcuh profit from its human genome sequencing effort.
Anyway, the point was that the HGP information was always destined to be released into the public domain, there wasn't even a question about it. It's nice for Clinton and Blair to take credit for it, but they didn't do anything. Release of the information still won't cover IP related to genes not identified or detrimental genetic mutations/ variants that cause disease, the majority of which the HGP will not capture. However, the HGP information will make such things far easier to find in the future.