Patent Troll Going After Alzheimer's Researchers

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Nature News: "The website of the Alzheimer's Institute of America (AIA) doesn't reveal much about the organization, but portrays it as committed to supporting research and patients. Among people who study Alzheimer's disease, however, the AIA, based in St Louis, Missouri, is best known for filing lawsuits against companies and researchers — a practice that scientists say could hamper the progress of research into combating the dreaded disease."

Re:Poetic justice

[pitchpipe]

Can somebody equip an Alzheimer's patient with a few Uzi's

There is no need. The judges that will oversee these cases will have no problem seeing the absurdity of this patent trolls claim's due to the proximity of Alzheimers to their own mortality. They only have a problem seeing patent/copyright trolls for what they are when it affects the young/poor.

Re:What shouldn't be patentable

[Charliemopps]

It's not legal. Congress passed a provision in the 80's to allow companies to patent genetically modified crops so someone couldn't simply steal some seeds and resell them. The provision does not cover animals, and certainly not human DNA. The courts have continually failed to distiguish between the 2 and since congress sees the united states ecenomic future and being the worlds patent troll, they go right along with this shameful practice. There are even several AIDS drugs that were derived directly from blood samples taken from desperately poor prosititutes in Africa. They actually patented the poor womens entire DNA sequence. If anything gets you sent to hell, it's this sort of crap.