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Patents Science

Open Source Biology Initiative 141

Posted by Hemos from the good-move dept.
Nick dos Remedios writes "The Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) initiative aims to make biological technology more readily available to biologists everywhere. The latest genetics and biology tools should be freely available to researchers over the internet, but instead access is typically restricted by commercial patents and prohibitive licensing fees. BIOS and its associated BioForge aims to overcome these restrictions to innovation by encouraging companies and public sector research organizations to contribute their research tools and technologies to the BioForge repository. In return, users of the technology are bound by an open source license to share all improvements with the original inventors and other license holders."
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Open Source Biology Initiative

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  • ummm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by usernotfound ( 831691 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:06AM (#10888528)
    In my opinion, all research should be this way in fields that are directly related to the betterment of our health. Who would object?

    • Re:ummm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quamaretto ( 666270 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:11AM (#10888584) Homepage
      In my opinion, all research should be this way in fields that are directly related to the betterment of our health. Who would object?

      The same people who would object to the betterment of our computers, e.g.:

      • Those who have direct financial interests in the information
      • Those who have indirect financial interests in the information, via it's distribution and use by others and the resulting "open market" of ideas and products

    • Re:ummm (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pe1rxq ( 141710 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:11AM (#10888586) Homepage Journal
      Unfortunatly large medicine producing companies don't agree with you....
      In the current system your illness isn't likely to be cured soon unless there is a significant market for the cure.
      Add to that the moron that came up with the idea to allow genes to be patented and you get a nice world to live in.

      If only a few governments (rich & developped) would have the guts to make cheap drugs and good research possible without wanting profits. (There will be profits ofcourse, but not in a monetairy sense)

      Jeroen

      • Re:ummm (Score:2, Interesting)

        by shatteredsilicon ( 755134 )

        Add to that the moron that came up with the idea to allow genes to be patented and you get a nice world to live in.

        I'm just waiting for the day when God turns up and claims he has prior art to the patented gene. :-D

        If only a few governments (rich & developped) would have the guts to make cheap drugs and good research possible without wanting profits.

        Who cares where the drugs are made? All the "generic viagra" spam proves that this is already done on a large scale. As it should be! :-)

        • All the "generic viagra" spam proves that this is already done on a large scale.

          Unfortunately a lot of the "generic viagra" is actually diluted Viagra(tm).

        • Re:ummm (Score:3, Funny)

          by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 )

          I'm just waiting for the day when God turns up and claims he has prior art to the patented gene. :-D

          Of course, with our system the way it is, sitting on top of prior art and waiting for infringement to come about as a business model has been patented, so God would be in trouble.

      • Re:ummm (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's not quite true to say that companies won't work on a disease unless there's a large enough market. In fact, treatment of rare diseases turns out to be very profitable -- just ask the folks at Genzyme (they produce treatments for very rare lipid storage disorders). The key is that the government provides very lucartive incentives for same.

        The problem for industry is that they are beholden to their shareholders. Treat a disesase, and you'll get repeat business so long as the drug works and there's nothi

      • Re:ummm (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SirGeek ( 120712 ) <sirgeek-slashdot ... g ['uck' in gap]> on Monday November 22, 2004 @01:53PM (#10890200) Homepage
        In the current system your illness isn't likely to be cured soon unless there is a significant market for the cure.

        What are you kidding ? Medicine Producing Companies will NEVER cure anything. Cures immediately close the market for a product. Why do you think we have so many allergy treatments and no cures ? Why do you think we have arthritis treatments but no real cures ?

        The answer: Cures = Limited Profit ( once cured, they aren't customers anymore), Treatments ( that don't kill ) = Perpetual Unlimited Profit

        • Re:ummm (Score:2, Insightful)

          by menacing_cheese ( 687890 )
          Well both of those disorders are caused by the host's immune system. So a cure would likely have to involve destroying the immune system. Not something I'm going to be signing up for no matter how much my hands hurt.

        • Re:ummm (Score:3, Interesting)

          by m.h.2 ( 617891 )
          Having spent many years in the "Life Sciences" arena, I can attest to how (sadly) true this is. I hopped on board a small research division of a very large company. The division was essentially a group of scientists who really did (do) care about finding a CURE for a specific disease. The large corporation (who owns another division that benefits greatly from a TREATMENT for said disease) starts to do the math...

          research division (whose operating costs were mere pennies on the larger company's P&L.

    • Me (Score:3, Insightful)

      by grimner ( 646310 )
      If there is no financial incentive, who will pay for the research? Government funding has faded over the years leaving private industry to pay for much of the basic research upon which commercial enterprises are built. People need to understand, drugs are not expensive because the pharmaceutical industry is taking huge profits (unethical, I know) but they're expensive because research is *enormeously* expensive, combined with the fact that most drugs fail clinical trials. The money has to come from somew

      • Re:Me (Score:2, Insightful)

        by gowen ( 141411 )
        Government funding has faded over the years
        Completely true. But its not a fait accompli. Governments should do what the people want, rather than the people having to put up with what the government decides. If you think the nation's health will be improved by funding blue-sky research in biotechnology, vote for the people who will fund it, and prevent corporations "owning" knowledge about biotech through ludicrous patents on gene sequences.

      • Re:Me (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WindBourne ( 631190 )
        Actually, that is a real myth.
        The RD budget for most pharmaceutical companies is relatively minor. For many it is less than 10%. These companies have outlandous marketing costs that compare to what was done in the 60's.
        This does not mean that I am opposed to patents and copyrights. But I do think that things have gotten out of hand. The office is broken and patenting things that come from large companies almost at will. Likewise, the length of time granted for patents and CR are also ridiculus. When our co

        • Re:Me (Score:5, Interesting)

          by lovebyte ( 81275 ) * <lovebyte2000@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:56AM (#10889025) Homepage
          Having worked for a pharma and now being in the public research sector, I know you are right. R&D represents 1/3 of the total budget of pharmas, of which Research is a 1/3.
          Nowadays, most new drugs are not coming from pharmas but from biotechs anyway. What pharmas are good at is Development which costs 100s of millions of dollars/euros, takes years and signals the death of most potential drugs coming out of research.

          Can anyone explain to me who will pay for development if there are no patents? The only way pharmas can make money is by having the exclusivity on a drug for some time. If you can see another way, please tell me what it is.
        • I'm not sure about the actual percentages, but I believe you are right about marketing costs being outrageous. Like everyting else, drugs also need to be marketed. I'm not saying its right or wrong, it just is. It's estimated [pbs.org] that it costs about $800 million dollars to bring a drug to market. Some of this is research, some is marketing and other expenses. Regardless, this is what it costs.

          There is good reason to have long patents. Consinder when patents are filed, typically very early in R&D,

          • Re:Me (Score:3, Informative)

            by WindBourne ( 631190 )

            While some things take 12-15 years, many do not. Look at the first version of aids drugs. They used 3-5 di-DNA to terminate the DNA and prevent rna->dna reverse-transcription. The entire idea was from sanger, nicholson sequencing. In 1981, I was doing sequencing of VEE (and other virus) dominatly using this approach. In '83, when the first drugs came on line, it was simply the chain terminator. There was no R. Yet a patent was granted. How much money was spent? very little.

            As to the costs, well, just be

    • Who would object? The far right neo-conservatives. The far right "Christian" conservatives. Large corporations. Shrub, er, I mean, Bush, who doesn't believe in real science but rather corporate profit. The list goes on and on...

    • the people paying for it for starters (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      you pie in the sky everything should be free, but never contribute anything but demands people need to understand one simple thing.

      someone has to pay for all this research and work, and to pay for something they have to make something in return.

      I know that is not how it works in your mothers basement, but that is how it works for those on the outside!


    • Here are some facts to consider.

      Number one killer [cdc.gov] in the US- Heart Disease.
      Second most prolific killer- Cancer.
      Number one actual cause of death [cdc.gov]- Tobacco.

      Meanwhile, the US government resists allocating federal research funds for a treatment that might lengthen peoples' lives. It also desires an international treaty [sfgate.com] against researching this medical technology- Stem Cell Research.

      In 2018 benefits owed will be more than taxes collected, and [the current] Social Security will need to begin tapping [ssa.gov] th
    • The problem is that most of those tools require one to spend lots of resources (read money) to develop.

      Besides, why should someone who is working for the betterment of our health not be allowed to profit from his work while someone working to create the newest hit video game be allowed to make millions? Doesn't that sort of send the wrong message, that we are willing to pay for graphic video games but not for something that will actually make our lives better?

    • I would. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pavon ( 30274 )
      The thing you have to understand out the medical field is that (unlike software patents) royalties (and expected royalties) from medical patents have funded a huge amount of research that simply would not have been done otherwise. Furthermore, the costs to bring a new medicine to market are very high due to FDA regulations, and no company or research institute would have the means to do so if they were not given some sort of monopoly to sell the drug on the market.

      I would agree that any research funded by

  • Patents (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:06AM (#10888539) Homepage Journal
    Sadly, the most pressing problem isn't the availabilty of biological tools, but the fact that researchers are being allowed to gain patents on their genome sequences, even though such people as The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are against it [ucl.ac.uk]. They've no problem with patented gene therapies, but patenting the genes themselves is just a horrible thing for cutting edge science.

    • Re:Patents (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 )
      It used to be that you could run to the patent office with nothing more than a printout full of G, T, A, and C. The torrent of sequence patents reached such a frenzy a couple years ago that the patent office actually tightened the restrictions for sequence patents: now to patent one you have to provide a mechanism of action, i.e. how the sequence interacts with some drug or other treatment. It was covered on Slashdot.

      Not that I think genes should be patentable at all, unless you designed them yourself. Tha

      • yeah, I don't understand this (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Trepidity ( 597 ) <[delirium-slashdot] [at] [hackish.org]> on Monday November 22, 2004 @01:02PM (#10889760)
        Merely discovering things that exist in nature in any other field is not patentable.

        If I am inspired by some strange cave formation and design a new method of supporting buildings around it, perhaps I can patent it the particular method of supporting buildings. But I can't just patent the cave formation after discovering it and sue anyone who then applies any principles contained therein to anything.
        • MOD PARENT UP!

          Just last night, I was sitting in front of the television, mouth agape (I know, it's my fault for sitting in front of the TV!) as a "representative" for a group of Kalahari Bushmen (I am not kidding) was explaining to [Jane Pauley?] that the tribe was angry at a UK-based pharma company for patenting the use of some element of a plant, that they have been consuming for thousands of years, as an appetite suppressant.

          I admit that I changed the channel before hearing the rest of the piece, how
    • IANAPL (Patent Lawyer), but I believe that the patent office has not been granting patents purely for gene sequences anymore (I won't speak of the initial rush to patent all sequences, ESTs, SNPs, etc.)

      IMO, two of the best examples of a useful patent, and a valid granting of a patent, stem for Taq and GFP.

      -> Taq: this protein allows people to amplify the smallest amounts of DNA into very useful quantities. The processes of using Taq both in genome sequencing, "DNA fingerprints", and making things like

  • not likely (Score:3, Funny)

    by scaaven ( 783465 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:07AM (#10888541)
    Even though DNA is 'open source', it's so hard to hack right now company's stand to make more money by hoarding ideas and insights.

  • Great (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Custard ( 587661 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:07AM (#10888552) Homepage Journal
    Great, now the terrorists will be able to create genetically enhanced supermen to fight our all natural 100% human soldiers. We're doomed!!!

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Girckin ( 831557 )
      Great, now the terrorists will be able to create genetically enhanced supermen to fight our all natural 100% human soldiers. We're doomed!!!
      Unless the Bush Administration is holding back on the biological engineering capabilities of "terrorists", it will probably be the other way around. Genetically "enhanced" soldiers to invade whatever country is "lacking in freedom", and force "freedom" upon them. But don't worry -- we're still doomed.
  • ...lots of those out there already [gforge.org]; more on GForge here [gforge.org].

    Splitting up the project load makes sense to me; that way one site - SourceForge - doesn't have to bear the full load. Also, it lets folks do custom things to make their site more useful - like Graal [graal.net].

  • BIOS is working close with the CMOS (Score:4, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:13AM (#10888610) Journal
    CMOS = Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
  • ok, everyone share your porn, and we'll have nice nice database for scientific research

  • Let's make everything free! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Blitzenn ( 554788 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:16AM (#10888636) Homepage Journal
    I like this free kick we are on. I think everything should be free. No one should be allowed to make or invent anything that isn't open source, (at least that I want to use). I would ever have to spend money again. Of course I couldn't make any money either, seeing as how everything is free. The up side is that I wouldn't have to work anymore because I don't have to pay for anything. But then who is working to make my bread if everything is free?

    Somethings have to be possessions of an individual, so that we can charge others to use them and make money ourselves. Jealousy or envy is not a reason to force someone to give something up. If you can make a saleble product from the tools you need, then buy the tools. OTherwise I would venture to guess that it is not worth doing to begin with. Gosh, I had to buy a computer to write code with, what a horrible thing that I had to pay for a tool that should be free!

    • Re:Let's make everything free! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:38AM (#10888808) Homepage
      Were this a utopia...

      The cost of production of everything drops all the time. It takes one man now to do a thousand men's work from a thousand years ago. Since the cost of production is tending to 0 (thanks mostly to increased automation) there is no reason why everything cant be free in the long term.

      All that is required for this to work is for a small minority to be willing to work for no gain except prestiege. It's not like the work would be boring - mostly conceptual and design, like the creation of new robots. The repetative or boring stuff can be automated.

      The proof that this sort of system _can_ work is the open source movement. Where the marginal cost of production is 0 enough people (especially the talented, gifted, self motivated people) seem to be willing to contribute for free to keep the whole system running perfectly well. Those that use and give nothing back... well they cost nothing to those who do contribute, so it doesn't bother them much.

      Open source software offers more than just free software. It offers hope that in the long run the sort of utopian vision that had us all not working but enjoying our time on our persuit of choice (which may indeed be something useful - even if no one is making us do it) CAN become a reality. In fact it's fairly inevitable... the only way it can be stopped is tying up of ideas that provide artifical costs to make sure that the things you need never become essentially free.
      • The proof that this sort of system _can_ work is the open source movement. Where the marginal cost of production is 0 enough people (especially the talented, gifted, self motivated people) seem to be willing to contribute for free to keep the whole system running perfectly well. Those that use and give nothing back... well they cost nothing to those who do contribute, so it doesn't bother them much.

        I would hazard a guess that most of these contributors also have PAYING jobs, otherwise they might not feel
        • I would hazard a guess that most of these contributors also have PAYING jobs, otherwise they might not feel so charitable.

          Of course when _everything_ is free paying jobs are not required to sustain yourself or your family... this is the whole basis of the argument. If you can afford to work for free, and you like it, why not?

          While we might be able to find some people who like to write code or find the cure to a particular disease, it will be much tougher to find someone that enjoys working in a coal mi
      • I thought the parent post described a key reason why open source is important and one of the reasons open source is so appealing to me.

        Working sucks. Who wouldn't like society to become a utopia. But we're told that it would not work because of "human nature" (whatever that is), and based on a small number of countries (who had no prior history of democracy) failed to achieve it and even became more totalitarian then they were before under monarchy.

        But what do a few case studies prove? A little yes, bu

      • Things will never switch over entirely to open source as long as there are people who desire to have more than other people. I mean, thats the whole point of accumulating wealth isn't it?

    • Its good to see other people starting to catch on to the idea of Socialism that has been a developing trend in Europe and Canada for a few decades.

      But in counter-point to your exaggeration, I personally don't think that way. Software doesn't need to be free, but I greatly appreciate those people who do contribute their time to making free software. Music doesn't need to be free, but at current prices I'm not in a hurry to buy, I'll just keep making my own.

      However, I do think there are some things that sho
      • I agree with you 100%. 110% actually. I really do beleive that somewhere along the line there has to be some socialism applied to things that have to be distributed evenly amongst the public in order to maintain morality in those services. Education, Healthcare are the too largest ones, which unfortunately neither of which are distributed evenly or freely in the US.

        I also agree that scientific facts should undoubtably fall in there too, but there has to be a distinction between 'facts' and the tools u
    • Insightful my ass. This isn't about consumer or business software - this is about software produced by the scientific community, for use by the scientific community. By definition, this software has to be open to peer review and not subject to insidious licensing terms in order to be useful. What good is a piece of research software, for example, whose EULA assigns all patents derived from its use to the author's university?

    • Re:Let's make everything free! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rostin ( 691447 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:56AM (#10889020)
      If only I had mod points...

      There's a compelling, if naive, argument to be made for open sourcing all pharma research. It proceeds along the same lines as the "If everyone would just throw their guns in the ocean, we'd have world peace!" argument. Or, in different terms, "If wishes were wings, pigs could fly."

      The barrier is human nature. People who do things for selfless reasons are few and far between. Most people who think they do things for selfless reasons are self-deluded. It's also really easy to give other people's money away. The same people who think that they'd give all their money away if they were Bill Gates are probably giving little to none of what they do have.
    • We called it "Science."

      KFG
    • 1) You pay for a computer because it can't be copied readily. If (when?) you can download the new Intel processor or iPod from the internet, hardware will be open sourced.
      2) Intellectual property that doesn't correlate to a tangible asset should be free since it requires labor to create value. For example, your account number is information that shouldn't be free, because it correlates to real assets. But the banking software that your bank uses to manage said assets, which requires labor to set up and use

  • ummm...... Nice name. Seems familiar though (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:17AM (#10888646) Journal

    Why select a name that has a specific meaning in your own sector?

    This creates unnecessary confusion. A marketing faux pas that could have been easily avoided by simply choosing a lessor known acronym.

    • Uhhhh, _very_ few people know what BIOS means. Sure, we know what it means on /., it could also be argued that a significant percentage of people on the internet know, but that data is heavily biased.

      For instance, when I worked for an ISP, I had a hard time telling people (lots of everyday life friends, peers and fellows) what ISP meant.

      Cross-sector acronyms not only exist, they are very common. We (IT sector) can't even keep acronyms for a single thing (UML comes to mind), much less settle on what they m

  • Isn't this mostly true anyway? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MasterofSpork ( 459876 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:18AM (#10888652)
    Typically for academic institutions, you publish all of your techniques including changes that you made to the protocol to get your results. This, and the willingness to share and explain your approach, is called good science.

    The problem comes when you try to open up approaches done by commercial companies. Many of these companies spent years putting together the kits that they sell. Only the restrictive licensing and patents allow them to fully recoup their losses.

    Take Amaxa for example. They supply an electroporation kit that works wonders for expressing constructs in cells. Unfortunately each kit costs $300 for 25 transfections. My lab typically goes through 3 of these every 2.5 weeks. Now if Amaxa would just tell us what the composition of the buffers are, that is all that I need to put together my own electroporation system and save my lab at least 15k a year! As a downside, Amaxa would cease to exist. What would be the point of having a biotech company that develops new techniques? Selling support? Please.
    • While the old incentive tune is certainly a familiar one here on /., the other side is also well known. Here's an example going the other way.

      This link [noaa.gov] shows you that by sharing protocols on the web, it is a fact that researchers can save money and even get better results than the crap that is being pushed in a lot of these kits. In fact, the profit motive typically acts contrary to the ends of good science.

      And speaking of on-line protocols, this is what I expected to see from something call

      • But you get that anyway in publications. Typically it only takes an email to get reagents and protocols from any other academic researcher. I agree, I get much better efficiencies using my own reagents than a Promega kit with CaPhos transfections.

        The problem comes when a company spends lots of time making and optimizing (that is what takes the most time) a novel assay or technique that works really well. Would you really expect them to open up all their work?

        It's one thing if the product is crap. Then it
    • ahhh, that's what i was forgetting about, being a student of phsyics and computer technology here at Purdue, i always forget about "commercial companies"
    • When I was a scientist, we had to make our own oxygen... Not that bad, but when I did research in the late 70's and early 80's there weren't very many kits of anything. There were papers with "materials and methods" and you tried to read the tiny little print of a recopied preprint (no .pdf's in those days)and make sense out of the directions that had been clobbered to incomprehension by some copy editor.

      I recall my professors complaining / bragging that they had to make their own chemicals. Their profe
    • Now if Amaxa would just tell us what the composition of the buffers are, that is all that I need to put together my own electroporation system and save my lab at least 15k a year!
      Epistemological question : If you don't know what's in the chemicals you use, how can you trust anything at all about the results? And how do you ensure your experiments are reproducible by the people who read your research?

  • Can I be the first... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fross ( 83754 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:18AM (#10888656)
    ... to make an "Open Sores" joke?

    No?

    I'll get me coat.
  • The CAMBIA BIOS Initiative: Proposal Summary Open innovation is becoming a strikingly successful model in Open Source Software and is currently being applied to a wide range of industries from publishing to space research. BIOS will explore, apply and extend this democratisation of innovation to problems of biology affecting the disenfranchised of the world, in fields ranging from human nutrition, food security and agriculture, to environmental management and improvement, conservation and use of biodiversit

  • bioinformatics.org? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dan dan the dna man ( 461768 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:19AM (#10888666) Homepage Journal
    Doesn't this mostly just duplicate the efforts of bioinformatics.org [bioinformatics.org]?

    "The Bioinformatics Organization, Inc. (Bioinformatics.Org) was founded to facilitate world-wide communications and collaborations between practicing and neophyte bioinformatic scientists and technicians. The Organization provides these individuals, as well as the public at large, free and open access to methods and materials for and from scientific research, software development, and education. We advocate and promote freedom and openness in the field as well as provide a forum for activities which facilitate the development of such resources."

    This is just another example of someone trying to carve out a niche in the "hot" area of bioinformatics - the same way as this profusion of Live-CD's for Bioinformatics. It seems to me it's all quite divisive. Bioinformatics models itself on the OSS movement for the most part, but its inherent bindings with industry means there seems to be a lot of people trying to make names for themselves with "projects" even if it means duplicating the effort of someone else.

    (Yes I am a bioinformatician)..

  • Threading on thin ice here (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:19AM (#10888675)
    Open source biology, eh? Sound nice, but please, let's have someone to regulate and watch over these actions. The potential to improve the quality of life through biological engenieering is as big as the potential to end it.

  • Nice idea, but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:28AM (#10888724)
    This is a really nice idea. The problem is that all this research costs money and a lot of it is being done by publicly owned companies. A publicly owned company has an obligation to its stockholders to make profit and generally to maximize that profit.
    That's not just someone's idea, but that's actually the law.

    So, this research costs money and it's being done by companies that are obligated to make a profit off of this research they've paid for. So, they sell the results of that research for insanely large amounts of money.

    Now, we say, "that's just insanely priced," but in economic terms, that's "what the market will bear," which in layman's terms means that enough people are willing to pay that "insane price" that it's worth it to keep it at that price.

    This all follows very standard formulas that apply to most industries, not just drug companies. So, we sit around and talk about the evil of the drug companies, but the fact is, they're just doing their job as the law specifies.

    I have no problem with us changing the law, but it's kind of like changing the rules of the game after the game has started. All the players hurt by the new rules cry foul, for obvious reasons.
    • What the market will bear. What a lovely sentiment. It occurs to me that an antibiotic or vaccine isn't the same as the new Star Wars DVD.

      • Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Pedrito ( 94783 )
        What the market will bear. What a lovely sentiment. It occurs to me that an antibiotic or vaccine isn't the same as the new Star Wars DVD.

        But you're missing the point. This is a corporation, not an individual. It's a corporation which has a legal obligation to make as much money for its stockholders as it legally can. If it fails to do that, the company becomes legally liable and open to class action suits by the stockholders.

        I'm not saying it's the most humanitarian thing in the world. Far from it, but

        • It's a corporation which has a legal obligation to make as much money for its stockholders as it legally can. If it fails to do that, the company becomes legally liable and open to class action suits by the stockholders.

          I see this all the time, and while it is true, its only superficially so. The class action suits you mention are exceedingly difficult to win. If a CEO says, we believe that our long term profits will be increased through ethical co-operation rather than vicious competition (e.g. share i

          • And that's ridiculously difficult to do. The few cases that do succeed are usually when the decisions made are corrupt or simply idiotic, rather than through a differing emphasis.

            True, but the announcement of a class action suit against a company, regardless of whether the suit will succeed or not, can have disasterous consequences for a company. Generally not with larger ones, but what company wants to open themselves up to a lawsuit? It certainly won't boost their stock price in the short term.

            Look, I'
    • My problems come in when a privately-owned (don't confuse publicly-traded with publicly-owned)company buys research from a truly publicly-owned facility, like a university, then does the remaining research and testing (not a trivial expense, to be sure) required to bring a drug/method to market, tying up the whole enchilada with patents.

      If it was just their money that had been invested, I'd be closer to buying into your argument. But when a large chunk of it is my tax money, I see no reason they should be

    • Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jdcook ( 96434 )

      "This is a really nice idea. The problem is that all this research costs money and a lot of it is being done by publicly owned companies. A publicly owned company has an obligation to its stockholders to make profit and generally to maximize that profit. That's not just someone's idea, but that's actually the law."

      That's the law now . It used to be the law that a corporation had to serve the public good. There are sound reasons for the change but they needn't be absolute. (And another pet peeve, the

  • software stuff that we have today goes biological? Example:

    Open Source Trangenics (we have Open Source plants everywhere today, except for the Monsanto stuff)

    Virus/Bacteria/etc that target trangenic species (i.e. Mon.Soy.Bagle)

  • You are talking about an industry which has been screaming along with break throughs in recent times. So what barriers to innovation are you talking about exactly? Any concrete examples or is this just a whiny "I want to play with their toys"?

    Some companies spend a fortune researching this stuff and pay some of the smartest people on a planet a shed load of money to do it. What entitles you to the fruit of their labour free of charge?

    Without the backing of sophisticated equipment and experience these
    • This isn't an initiative aimed toward individuals. It is aimed towards academia and research institutions so that they can break down barriers between each other and cooperate, in response to a perceived growth in corporate control of biology research (through patents, closed source EULA'd software, and researcher mindshare).
  • This highlights perhaps the biggest harm associated with the current patent regime: by making patents trivial to get (both in terms of cost and in terms of originality of thought), we have created a system whereby you almost have to take out patents on everything you do, for fear of someone else coming along later and patenting your work right out from under you.

    Even if the organization or individual who takes out the patent has the best of intentions, once a patent exists the potential is there for use of

    • I think you are confusing the IP in tech with how science actually works. Most people do not patent their findings. You release your results to the world in forms of journals. Scientists then take your results, along with your techniques and can test them to prove, disprove, or expand upon and reach their own conclusions which they then publish, etc.

      The only times patents are used are when an actual product is produced. This can be a kit, a drug, a novel assay, whatever. The point is, that it was develope

      • This is a point well-taken, but I was thinking specifically of the patenting of gene sequences found in nature.

        In the larger sense, however, even I recognize that patent protection is a necessary evil (this does not make it any less an evil, in my view), and one I support insofar as it furthers the progress of the useful arts, to borrow a phrase. Our current patent regime, however, has demonstrated time and again that there is essentially no barrier to acquiring a patent, up to and including originality.

        T

  • There's also the OpenScience.org site that isn't biology specific: http://openscience.org/ [openscience.org]
  • You know, I'm not a fuddyduddy-- really I'm not-- but I have to wonder whether it's a good thing with the world the way it is to give greater access to biological tools to the Wide World out there.

    For every disenfranchised third world junta dictator, there are a hundred veterinary medicine scientists trying to keep undernourished flocks alive in countries like Uganda.

    But I just have to think that in the current climate it may not be the greatest of ideas to make available this kind of tool. Same way I fe

  • Science Commons (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:41AM (#10888844)
    There's also a branch of creative commons formed to work on this.

    Science Commons [creativecommons.org]

    They're more focused on 1. supporting open access to scientific literature, especially taxpayer-funded literature and 2. building licenses and modular contracts that allow companies and universities to waive some IP rights when it makes sense (such as, if we know we aren't going to make money on a gene patent and you could use it to cure tuberculosis, good on ya, but if you want to use it to make a viagra competitor, we get a piece...so to speak).

  • Prior commitments (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Sai Babu ( 827212 )
    I can see this taking off after some 'critical mass' is achieved. A big problem will be IP agreements that working researchers have with their employers. Some are so restrictive that 'the company' holds IP ownership on discovery totally unrelated to the employees 'paid for' expertise.

  • "open source virus"

    Sure, information should be freely available, but this could be a bit worrysome.

  • The majority of bioinformatics software is 'free for academic and non-profit use'. So I don't see how there is any hinderance to innovation. All this would do is hurt the little guy, who can currently get some nice extra income by selling software to the drug companies.
  • Download Aborted! [blogspot.com] has a very interesting article [blogspot.com] on this topic. It was previously covered on Slashdot.
  • My DNA is licensed to be freely replicated, modified, executed and combined with other DNA, but only by my descendents, and provided that this license is included. How do I encode that in GTCA?
  • As I sit in my lab waiting for the buffer to warm up so I can study cyclosproin dependant endothelium relaxation as few things pop into my mind.

    #1 I find the concept of patents on natural gene sequences to be idiotic bordering on stupidity! That is like walking down the street, picking up a rock and filing a patent on it!!!

    #2 there is a good reason science is willing to pay so much to private compaines for specialized buffers etc. REPRODUCABILITY

    By buying from a well known company you know exactly what

  • This may get more resistance from the schools,, (Score:3, Informative)

    by fleshball ( 606934 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @12:15PM (#10889249)
    This may get more resistance from the schools than the private sectors. All universities make you sign away EVERY possible disovery you make, as a student or professor, and they are more inflexible about this than many companies. Mike Eisen told me that he imbeds GPL code into his code so that it cannot be exclusively owned by UC. Universities have realized the cash cow biotech really is. Look at university of Madison wisconsin. They still make money on "vitamin D milk".
  • It's about time people open up biology. Our health relies on it, and it is a technology that should stay public, and not be denied because of bloody patent rights.
  • ...as in 'freedom of speech'

    Bummer

    Z

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