Patent Sanity?
The ABC reports on the US court decision: Landmark ruling deems cancer gene patents invalid
A district court judge in the United States has ruled that patents should not have been awarded over the breast and ovarian cancer genes BRCA1 and 2.
The decision raises serious concerns about whether patents should be awarded on human and other genes and proteins found in nature.
Discovering the genes that are indicative of illnesses might justify a Nobel, but it is not an act of creation. The methods used to discover the genes are certainly candidates for patents, but not the genes themselves.
Intellectual property laws are all about rewarding creativity, not discovery. If you didn’t create it, you shouldn’t be able to patent it. Gene patents have slowed vital research and increased the costs.
2 comments
Finally some sanity as you put it. Absolutely disgraceful and grotesque to patent genes like that…let’s hope this invalidates the rest of the gene patents.
.-= last blog ..Clean =-.
It’s not like they patented their own genes. The people who supplied the genes received nothing, and in most cases paid huge medical bills.