nizo's Journal: Patents that hamper research, and will eventually doom us

Recently I read an article about how patents on human genes are hindering research of all kinds (in Reader's Digest of all places; there are plenty of articles floating around about the subject). Basically many research facilities can't afford to explore some avenues of research because of patents. Not only does this seriously hamper research, but it makes me wonder; what keeps other countries (say, China for example) from doing their own research? They could easily use this same information (what do they care about patents) and create new medicine (and hell, patent it, because the patented information won't be a part of the new product) to fight a wide variety of diseases (diabetes, cancers, etc). Rather than fix an obviously broken patent system, are we instead content to purchase medicine from other countries?

China is a Signatory

[Short Circuit]

China is a signatory to copyright law treaties, as, I believe, is India. Doesn't mean they'll honor those treaties, though.

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[WillAffleckUW]

I agree, but this is a real problem for those of us in research.

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[Short Circuit]

It's sad that so much research is limited to the realm of what can be commercialized. The medical research system needs to be overhauled.

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[WillAffleckUW]

Well, that's the field I work in. We've been under severe budget cuts in federal financing for public research, at a time when costs keep going up. Most people fail to understand that if a public university does the research, the patents are usually much less restrictive and much cheaper in terms of licensing.

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[nizo]

But that is the absurd part: IMHO, patents should never hinder medical research. Researching a cure for cancer should trump some greedy corporation's patent on some gene (especially a human gene, which is doubly perverse in my book). People would argue that much research wouldn't get done without greedy corporations (which is true), but that is yet another problem with priorities.

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[WillAffleckUW]

I agree with your viewpoint, but I try to deal with the world as it exists.

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[rk]

What I don't get is a patent on genes. Figuring out what a set of genes does is a discovery, not an invention. I can see patents issued for the process to find these mechanisms, and even on drugs that rely on the actions of these genes, but the researchers didn't invent the genes... they're an inherent part of the world in which we live. With this sort of system, if some physicist comes up with an electrogravitic theory or figures out that the light barrier can be broken, he or she could patent it and n

Re:China is a Signatory or Why Patents R Gud

[WillAffleckUW]

This is the argument of most people around the world. Seriously, genes aren't something unique to a person - many genetically-related people will have the same sequence - yet our Regime permits them to be patented.

Yet, there are many examples of prior art - for example, your great-aunt may have the same sequence - does she not have a claim that invalidates the patent? Yet we get around these by tailoring end segments to wrap the sequence in. Yet this is not a novel discovery.

A friend of mine, a Japanese

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[nizo]

Using your example of FTL, with our current system some other country (like China) would steal the patent and have a fleet of FTL capable ships and be colonizing nearby stars while we sat around with our thumbs up our butts trying to figure out how to affordably license the technology :-(

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[rk]

And doesn't that give you a warm and fuzzy all over?

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[nizo]

Yep. Either things like this will get fixed or we will turn into a second-fiddle country that depends on other countries for any product more advanced than a salad fork. Right now I can pretty much guarantee we will be buying Japanese/French made fusion reactors for example :-|

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[nizo]

Right. If the Chinese government started funding research that violated US patents, somehow I doubt we would even know about it. And it isn't like the final product would violate the patents; they are simply needed to create the final product.

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[tomhudson]

Copyright treaties are not a barrier to research for any country. Copyright != Patent.

Patents on Hamster Research & Coils

[Anarcho-Goth]

Misread subject lines.

More than one person has come up with a solution to the energy crisis that involves giant mutant hamsters generating electricity with giant hamster wheels. The problem with such a solution is how do you feed all those giant mutant hamsters?

Also, the book I just finished reading last night, Coils by Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen, involves a company that solves the energy crisis and becomes incredibly rich by ethically questionable means, but justifies it's actions in that because of