Patenting

[lederhosen]

And *this* is why I think the patent system is irretrievably broken.

"The race to patent the SARS virus has begun. Researchers in Canada and Hong Kong, the United States Government and biotechnology companies have filed provisional patents claiming rights to some of the organism's genes, and the virus."

[edit]


The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has applied for rights to the entire virus and said the aim was not to profit but prevent others from controlling the technology.




What really angers me here is that from recent experience, I know the time it takes to assemble a patent application. Every damn one of these provisional applications means that *somebody* with a good deal of knowledge and scientific training has been sidetracked into spending a good deal of their time mucking around with writing drafts in legalese. Rather than the job they should be doing and, unless I badly miss my mark, would much rather be doing, i.e. fighting the disease.

James Cherry, of patent and trademark firm Freehills Carter Smith Beadle, said patenting prevented enormous pressure to keep new information secret.

This seems kinda odd to me, because I've been spending the last threeish years obliged to greatly restrict what I tell people about what I'm doing, precisely because my employers are aiming to get a patent out of it. I recall being required to remove a whole lot of information from a presentation for fear it might prejudice our application...

(Ironically enough, FCSB are the same firm I've been dealing with.)

Comments

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Some variant on the GPL (General Public License) maybe?

I'm going to hang my head in geekly shame and ask how that produces revenue for the inventors, because I don't know the details...

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

More than you ever wanted to know about the General Public License (as used by GNU/Linux systems) can be found here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html

The GNU project is software specific but a lot of the ideas about intellectual property rights could be applied to other fields. I particularly like the notion of Copyleft, described in the middle of the page above.

As to how it makes money, the gist of it is that "free" does not equal "gratis" - it's used more in the sense of "non-proprietary." As they put it,

We maintain this free software definition to show clearly what must be true about a particular software program for it to be considered free software.

"Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in "free beer.''

Further discussion of "free software" at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html In particular,

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

If this intrigues you half as much as it did me, you'll go read the whole damn site too.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

"free" does not equal "gratis" - it's used more in the sense of "non-proprietary."

*noddle* OTOH, without the ability to control who has copies of it, or even to charge for its redistribution, it's not clear to me how the original inventor/discoverer can hope to make money out of this.

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

They sell Linux, don't they?

There are variations on the "copyleft" theme - the GPL software license is just once example. I've seen (can't find where) an assortment of "non-commercial licenses" where anyone can use it but nobody (aside from the originator) can sell it, for example.

OTOH, I've got a strong feeling that this sort of intellectual property belongs to humanity at large, *not* to the corporation that found it first - so I'm all for them not making buckets of money about it. It might stop some of them who are only in it for the money - but any scientist who's solely in it for the money should probably be in business instead anyway, eh?

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, like it or not, scientists still have to pay the bills. This sort of research is expensive - it can't be funded entirely by goodwill. :-(

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

True, the money has to come from somewhere. But my layman's understanding of the concept of patent, and how it's currently used, is that patents serve more to prevent someone else making money off your work than to permit you to do so.

Example: PharmaCo (fictional company) invests the money to go down to the Amazon Basin and interrogate the natives about their medicinal plants. The PharmaCo representatives drag back a bunch of samples along with what the tribespeople use them for, and PharmaCo's scientists are chained to their desks until they figure out what's good for which, at which point PharmaCo applies for patents on these compounds, one of which turns out to cure male pattern baldness. (And we just wondered why the Amazonian tribesmen all had such great hair.)

Now patent has a fixed term, much like copyright, only shorter. I think in the US it's for fifteen or seventeen years. So for the first fifteen or so years this product is on the market (minus the time it takes to get regulatory approval) PharmaCo is a monopoly source on Amazonian Hair Creme, and they can charge whatever they want. They are making money hand over fist.

After the patent expires, GeneriCo starts making a generic version of the product, but PharmaCo can still sell their original formula. They're still making money without the patent; it's just that other people are making money too.

And by making a cheaper generic version available, more people can benefit from the product and the net benefit to humanity is greater. If "Amazonian Hair Creme" sounds too frivolous, insert "Cure For Cancer" instead.

I don't have a problem with research firms making money as such, I just have a problem with them having monopoly control over beneficial products which they then price out of range for many people who could otherwise benefit from them.

The situation with AIDS/HIV drugs and Africa is a case in point.