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The Forum > Article Comments > Welcome to the greatest sale on Earth: the gene pool > Comments

Welcome to the greatest sale on Earth: the gene pool : Comments

By Julian Cribb, published 17/3/2010

Around the world thousands of genes, from humans, plants, animals are quietly being patented by a handful of wealthy corporates.

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(...cont'd)

@Shadow Minister: You don't have to get a patent invalidated. You simply ignore it.

This seems to be addressing a separate discussion, which is about how patent law and its implementation is evolving. I'll risk putting words in Pericles mouth and say neither of us are discussing patent law here in Australia. That only patent law that matters is in the US. Over time we will be forced to follow in their footsteps.

The second point is once upon a time, long, long ago, patent law seemed to work much better than now. In that era the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which was staffed mostly by engineers and scientists, decided the validity of patents. They were funded by taxes, but funding didn't grow to match the volume of patent applications and so granting of patents began to take an inordinately long time. Rather than increase funding, citing "get out of the way of innovation" the pollies directed the USPTO to stop spending so much time evaluating patents. Naturally standards dropped, and the word got around that patents were easier to get. This lead to an increase in the number of patent applications, which meant the USPTO could spend even less time on each patent, which meant standards dropped further ... it was a vicious cycle.

I am sure the pollies didn't have a clue what the end result their actions would be, but clearly it was to transfer the testing of patent from the start of application, where it was done by the USPTO, to the end, where it was done in the courts.

This was a major mistake. The judges could not make head nor tail of what the word "obvious" meant http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_02/b3966086.htm , and in fact have show precious little indication of understanding why we have a patent system at all.
(cont'd...)
Posted by rstuart, Friday, 19 March 2010 3:17:28 PM
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(...cont'd)
The result was not just doing away with the obviousness test, but also allowing patents on things that could never be patented during the USPTO reign, such as business methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_method_patent#United_States , software and now god help us genes.

Your response above to this is seems to be "so what, just ignore the patent and use legal remedies". It shows to me you don't have a clue how much this costs us as a society. By some weird coincidence this expansion of the patent system by lawyers and their cousins seems have benefited no one but ... lawyers and their cousins. It has created a legal niche for what could only be called commercial parasites feeding on the revenue stream generated by very people the patent system is supposed to be helping - those trying to commercialise new ideas.

Take the case of Jerome H. Lemelson. He accumulated some 600 patents, and earned $1.6 billion from them. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/02/patent-examiners-voice-opposition-to-patent-reform-act.ars He didn't invent or commercialise a thing, as he bought all those patents. He didn't produce a single useful product. Yet one man managed to leach $1.6 billion from those who were trying to do those things.

One man. $1.6 billion.

Let those numbers sink in. And now he has inspired a whole army of Jerome H. Lemelson aspirants to follow in his footsteps, such as NTP for example. The managed touch RIM for $615 million for patents that were about to be declared invalid! http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/03/technology/rimm_ntp/ I wonder if find that example inspiring or disgusting, Shadow?

As you can see from the ars link, these leaches are now fighting tooth and nail to keep patent reform from eliminating features of the system that allow them to latch onto their victims. Features like submarine patents.

We need to return to a system where the work of engineers and scientists is evaluated by other engineers and scientists. They did a reasonable job of it before, and would probably do so again. The lawyers and the law need to get out of the way, and let the innovators innovate.
Posted by rstuart, Friday, 19 March 2010 3:17:32 PM
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