[flixxx]

Excellent editorial by Crichton

[GSlob]

And wrong. It is the information that is patented. Those who spent money and time [and risked failure] in dicovering the info, have property rights to it, limited by law to something like 17 years. After that - public domain. Till then - pay for it or leave it there.

[Domestic Church]

Bump

[VOA]

bump

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Someone has just cornered the market on frog genes.

Alert all French restaurants!

[Androcles]

Good post. I'm all for fair protection of research/ideas but these cases - and the cases where people descibe a business method or idea with out any demonstration, working model or having to do it - are ridiculous.

[omnivore]

I'm in complete agreement with Crichton. Just because somebody sequences a gene is no reason to get a patent. Patents are for when somebody creates a new thing which has not previously existed. They are not for discoveries or documenting that which already exists in nature.

Both of these are intellectual works, but only the invention, not the discovery, is rightly patentable. Astronomers do not get patents for discovering comets. Nor should biologists get patents for sequencing genes.

[A. Pole]

[...] why should people or companies own a disease in the first place? They didn’t invent it. Yet today, more than 20 human pathogens are privately owned, including haemophilus influenza and Hepatitis C.[...]

Imagine the profit potential of owning the plague. Cannot cure it until you pay the "owner"!