Patents On Synthetic Life "Extremely Damaging" 171
An anonymous reader writes "Pioneer and veteran of genomics Professor John Sulston is extremely concerned about the patent applications on the first synthetic life-form. The patents were filed by the Venter Institute following the announcement of the first life-form to have a synthetic genome. Sulston claims the patent is excessively broad and would stifle research and development in the field by creating an effective monopoly on synthetic life and related molecular techniques. Prof. Sulston had previously locked horns ten years ago with Dr. Craig Venter over intellectual property issues surrounding the human genome project. Fortunately, Sulston won the last round and the HGP is freely accessible — Venter had wanted to charge for access, just as he now wishes to make 'synthetic life' proprietary."
Exter ... ? (Score:2, Funny)
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Somehow, as I was reading it, that title seemed to have the word "exterminate" in it. But maybe not.
You mean "Extereminate" right?
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There was one, before the typo in the news title was corrected.
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And "Twilight" is one of Some Guy's* lesser known novels about exterminating people via vampiric homosexuality.
*: I refuse to search the name of the author of Sparkly Pedos.
Time to go.. (Score:5, Insightful)
.. and patent myself before it is too late!
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Then it's time to mutate!
BRAAAIINS!
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It's too late. There's already large sections of your genome that have been patented by various companies.
Mom has prior art.
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that would infringe on my patent on you - I'm filing suit in Eastern Texas today.
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Sorry, but you missed my most recent post, that I started to mutate -- your patent claims are invalid now.
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And at the same time, I may pantent you as well.
Is that when, instead of pulling someone's pants down, you just rip the pockets off? :p
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OH NOES! [nocookie.net]
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No, we will form a patent pool. We call it F.A.M.I.L.I.
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Wouldn't that more correctly be "patent gene pool"?
No, no, no... it's about the licensing. (Score:2)
It's the "gene patent pool", or "GPP". Soon to offer you your very own "Gene Patent License", or "GPL", so you can "open source" yourself. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Provided, of course, that you agree to these teensy weensy conditions in the fine print, and pay our nominal licensing fee...
(I'm not sure if this is funny, or depressing.)
Cheers,
This ain't a patent troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Venter Institute have been working on this for 15 years. Allowing them to get a temporary monopoly to use or licence elements of the fruit of their R&D so they can get a return on their investment is exactly what the patent system was intended for.
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the depth of human greed astonishes me. This is something which, if openly available to the right people and if they were allowed to work on/improve on it as they saw fit, could literally change almost everything.
Keeping it locked behind a patent is greed at its worst (or finest, depending on which side you are on.) I'm all for getting paid for your ideas, but some things (like, oh I don't know, synthetic life) should belong to the entire human race, not Joe McBob who can only see lawsuits and dollar signs.
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if there was no chance for a profit, it is unlikely that Venter would have spend the last 15 years and shitloads of money on the project.
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:4, Interesting)
Correct.
Which would have given others with less money more of a chance to work on this, without feeling it would be fruitless to compete against the big pockets and risk being sued into oblivion.
Doesn't make sense (Score:2)
Which would have given others with less money more of a chance to work on this, without feeling it would be fruitless to compete against the big pockets and risk being sued into oblivion.
No patent has been granted yet. So what has kept them from working on it for the last 15 years?
What kept them from starting 16 years ago and beating Venter to the punch?
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The alternative is also failing pretty miserably too, just less dramatically and in much slower motion. Perhaps there is a solution that doesn't require existing on either extreme. Somewhere between Marx and Rand (both ideological nutjobs, who had a couple of salvageable points) there might be a proper solution. It will never happen because the rich and powerful like the status quo in either scenario, and normal people never matter.
I personally think unmitigated, and consequence free greed, like that whi
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:4, Insightful)
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some things (like, oh I don't know, synthetic life) should belong to the entire human race
What's the incentive to invest private funds and time into science if you cannot profit from the results just because the entire human race benefits from them?
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The problem is that without the possibility of patenting it, then Venter wouldn't have done the research in the first place, and nothing would be changed. The backers of Venter must have spend millions of dollars on this research. They wouldn't do that without a reasonable chance of a return.
Of course if it had instead been the work of public sector money, such as by a government funded university, then I'd agree it should be given openly to all.
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, I should have been more clear...I meant that the guy should be keeping his patent scope limited to exactly what he did, as opposed to making it so broad as to cover synthetic life in general.
My bad -_-;;
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's the thing though...if people applied for patents that were limited in scope and describe only their invention, the system would be working exactly as it was intended to. Unfortunately, greed (on applicant's part) and complacency (on the USPTO's part) prevent this.
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, the patent scheme is broken at it's core.
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In other words, the patent scheme is broken at it's core.
It's not the patent system that is broken. It's the people who use it that are broken. You can't fault the USPTO when people submit insanely broad patents that have nearly nothing to do with their actual invention. (You can, of course, blame the USPTO when they actually GRANT those patents, but that's a different conversation)
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It's not the patent system that is broken. It's the people who use it that are broken.
Isn't that the basis of "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument? If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken. Because you just can't expect people to naturally play nice, and not game the system.
With regard to your earlier post, eliminating patents would screw over the honest patent appliers. Status quo screws over everyone.
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Isn't that the basis of "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument? If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken.
So you blame a system as being broken when it's the people that do the breaking? That doesn't make any sense.
That's like saying cars are a flawed method of transportation because most people drive like assholes. That isn't the car's fault, it's the asshole's fault.
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So you blame a system as being broken when it's the people that do the breaking?
Not quite, although I can see where you got that from. What I am saying is that a system open to blatant corruption is a broken system. We can obviously differ on definitions of "blatant corruption." My opinion, the patent system is open to "blatant corruption" to the extreme. Ergo, the patent system is broken.
Excellent, car analogies. I am not arguing the theory of patents with you, only the implementation. If there were no rules on roads regarding direction of flow, stop signs/lights, speed, etc,
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Quite the contrary, there are some areas that desparately need the patent system to continue and flourish. The medical industry in general, and the pharmaceutical industry specifically are a good example. R&D is extremely expensive and depends on the windfall of blockbuster drugs to sustain it. Drugs and medical devices are extrodinarily expensive to develop, but fairly easy to replicate. 20 years isn't that big of a price to pay.
Software and engineering in general are bad areas for patents. Rarely
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You're misinformed. More than half of the medical research money comes f
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Where'd the other 5% go?
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Someone mentioned that one of the original ideas behind the patent was not to "protect the little guy" but to allow trade secrets to be revealed without potential loss to the company who has them. Similar concept, of course, just on a grander scale. Trade secrets could stifle innovation -- at least if the idea is out there, people can license it and invent off of it.
I mean, look at the formula for Coca Cola. How many great new inventions could have been created had the details of that syrupy goodness bee
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Haven't you seen Flash of Genius about the invention of windshield wipers?
Yes. You should not get $20 million dollars for being the first person to think "Gee, I wish my windshield wipers had more speeds."
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Reality: Average Joe invents something. Average Joe has the foresight to patent it. Corporation X sees invention and mass-produces it for less than Average Joe can. Average Joe sues Corporation X, but is told that his estimated legal costs for the case will be $1,500,000 once they have done stalling and playing games. Corporation X offers to buy Joe's patent for a pitance, and Joe relctantly agrees.
Mass production? (Score:2)
Oh, no, that's the old theory. Haven't you heard? Average Joe can produce stuff so cheaply that large corporations cannot compete.
Look at the media industry: despite mass production, they are completely unable to print CDs and DVDs at a lower cost than Average Joe does at home.
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This is what would happen today, Average Joe cannot afford a patent nor can he afford to protect himself against suits from patent trolls.
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Except patents were designed to protect specific objects, tools, and machines with specific functions--like the iPhone, Droid, cotton gin, etc. not fundamental biochemical interactions. If they're building a specific, non-cognizant organism for a specific purpose, ok; if they're going after the whole concept of synthetic life, no.
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heh - objects, tools, machines, and LINES OF CODE - don't forget that one, as it seems to be f*cking with my coding every day. 6 lines of obvious software shader code covered by a patent... grr
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Except that life is not an invention and life and genes should not fall within the scope of patent.
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If they're building a specific, non-cognizant organism for a specific purpose, ok; if they're going after the whole concept of synthetic life, no.
Neither of those things qualifies for a patent however.
The latter less so (0%) than the former (Above 0%when talking about the building process and tools to do so, but still 0% as-is)
There are millions of years of prior art over exactly "synthetic life"
My grandparents did it to make my parents, and my parents did it to made me. That's 6 people showing prior art, two thirds of which were born and done so long before the people filing the patent.
* We must assume that humans, animals, plants, and whatever the
World domination. Finally. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:World domination. Finally. (Score:4, Funny)
"So if you study steel, all steel structures should be yours? And if you study the world..."
I'll study poontang, thank you very much!
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So if you study steel, all steel structures should be yours? And if you study the world...
Yes, if you manage to create steel factories and produce steel products first. If you manage to be the first to sail around the world you have studied...
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So if you study steel, all steel structures should be yours?
Sure, who cares about steel; steel is weak. What is steel compared to the synthetic flesh that wields it? Now go and contemplate this on my re-sequenced Tree of Woe (patent pending*)
*That is power.
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Sure, who cares about steel; steel is weak. What is steel compared to the synthetic flesh that wields it?
Well, eg, it is harder to poke pointy metal things into. *Splork*.
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If you were first to invent steel, then of course you would have earned yourself a limited time monopoly to use or license it. You benefit from that time limited monopoly. The world benefits from you letting them know the secret of this new wonder metal.
Of course that particular invention was long since made public and isn't now patentable.
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The world benefits from you letting them know the secret of this new wonder metal.
Or, more precisely, from not letting them know the secret, since that's what patents boil down to in practice. People theoretically 'know the secret', but they are forbidden from practicing it under pain of having men with suits and guns have stern conversations with them in concrete rooms.
So patents are actually about deliberately slowing the improvement of the world until they expire, and deliberately using that regulated vacuum of innovation to create commercial profit - in the absence of what the market
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The moral of this story: if you create an honest creation to use, rather than to sell - assuming it's a creation which is beneficial to all and not something which helps the wielder while harming others (like say a weapon or a secret process which only gives your business 'competitive advantage' in a zero-sum market) - then you will lose nothing by not patenting or copyrighting it but will in fact gain hugely, as your creation will be distributed widely, make the world more efficient, spark new and better i
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Spoken like someone who has never had to provide for himself by earning a living.
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A statement of the complete opposite of the truth. Before patents, inventors would seek to profit from their inventions by keeping them secret. For example in the steel hypothetical, the inventor would keep the secret of
Re:This ain't a patent troll (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the intent of the system is clearly written in the United States Constitution, and was to advance the arts and sciences. I.e. a consideration for the [b]people[/b], not the inventor.
The time limitations on patents and copyrights were deliberately kept short in order to force the inventor or artist to create new work instead of living on the profits reaped from old works.
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You make it sound as if it was one sided. For the people, not the inventor. That of course can;t be true because the onus is on the inventor to apply for the patent. He would not do so if he didn't benefit from the system.
The truth is it was always intended to be a balance - for inventors to reveal their secrets in exchange for that limited time monopoly. Both people and inventor were intended to benefit from the arrangement.
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I have no problem with allowing them a return on their investment.
But the means is a most unnatural and extremely wasteful and unnecessarily restrictive monopoly, granted and upheld solely by government fiat and force, paid for by our tax dollars. Monopolies are totally unacceptable. Takes a lot of force and expense to make the system function at all. And there is an endless line of scoundrels trying to take advantage of the system's huge uncertainties to argue for having the government cover far mor
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Allowing them to get a temporary monopoly to use or licence elements of the fruit of their R&D
If they were actually patenting something they invented or worked on for a year (or ideally 15 years) then there wouldn't be as much of an issue.
It's the fact they patented not a method but a thing, and a thing they didn't create.
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10 Yep, I think we can all safely say that The Genome is the mother of all Prior Art!
20
30 P.S.
40 No, I didn't read the patent application, so I don't really know how broad their application is and if the summery doesn't stretch the truth a bit in Prof. Sulston's direction. Assuming the summery is correct - Go To 10
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Ack, no! I would rather have them patent this instead of copyright it. Patents expire in a decade or two, copyrights last a day less than forever.
Prior Art (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately for him (Score:2)
There is prior art in creating extremely variable genes. It's called sexual reproduction, and it's so simple even bacteria can do it.
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Actually, Bacteria do asexual reproduction, or more specifically binary fission [wikipedia.org]. So, no, bacteria can't do it.
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"Man, I'm tellin' you Bob...the things that chick does with her flagella? Oof, it's enough to make you divide!"
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Bacterial conjugation is often incorrectly regarded as the bacterial equivalent of sexual reproduction or mating. Loosely, and misleadingly, it can be considered to be a limited bacterial version of sex, since it involves some genetic exchange.
While you are correct that bacteria have more advanced mechanisms than just binary fission, it is not considered sexual reproduction. In sexual reproduction you have 2 genomes (with more or less the same genes) from 2 different individuals, thus allowing the propagation of (hopefully) useful mutations and allowing greater diversity in the species.
In bacterial conjugation, OTOH, one bacteria has a beneficial gene (AKA plasmid) that is copied and transferred to another bacteria that does not have it. This mec
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I stand corrected. I should have said: "...beneficial gene (usually carried on a plasmids)..."
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Yeah just ignore all that stuff about transduction, transformation and conjugation.
You are told bacteria reproduce asexually in high school. However when you take a university microbiology course you learn that different bacteria can share genetic material, even across species (leading to all the antibiotic resistance we see today). While it might not look like sex to mammals, the exchange and recombination of genetic material through mechanisms other than meiosis IS sexual reproduction, since offspring inh
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I wasn't ignoring it, I just wasn't considering it sexual reproduction. Sure it has the same end result but as far as I am aware it is two independent processes (horizontal transfer and asexual reproduction). If together they are considered sexual reproduction then fine.
I did Biology up to "Higher" level. I have no idea what your local equivalent would be (I don't even know where you are) but it ends 1 year before high school does in Scotland (you do it in 5th year, leave in 6th year...although you CAN leav
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Despite its name, the sex pilus is not used for sexual reproduction, and cannot be equated with a penis, although such comparisons are often used to ease understanding.
Transfer of genetic material does not constitute sex. There is no reproduction involved in that process. Any following asexual reproduction is simply preceded by that process which changes the parent cell - the reproduction is in now way effected by the transferal (other than the fact that it increases the cell size, so may speed up the separation). There is no male or female cell, rather a donor and recipient.
Don't you understand? (Score:5, Funny)
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"Not born...shit into existence." [wikipedia.org]
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That was a great movie until comedy central played it into the ground.
Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
We should start calling them "Letters of Marque", so people will understand their purpose better.
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I will trade my lunch for mod points.
What makes this spookily accurate is the focus on global "intellectual property" enforcement regimes, so that "we can protect our interests abroad". Raw nationalist piracy on a scale that makes pillaging the Plate Fleet look like a 10 cent raid on a Take A Penny, Leave a Penny box.
Good gravy, and wait until the Chinese get in on the act. Instead of ignoring "IP" rights and actually making things - hah, naive fools - imagine a billion Chinese patent trolls filing th
Oh it's fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so worried about this. Monsanto already showed exceptional responsibility with their GM patents on 99.5% of the crops our food, clothes, textiles, and medicines come from. Let's take it to the next step.
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It is ok for there to be potential for abuse as long as the person with the power does not abuse it? But what happens when they decide to?
Just pretend it never happened, stupid.
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I believe you need to have your sarcasm detector replaced.
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@Aphoxema: my guess is you are a Monsanto employee because if there's one company being terribly irresponsible with their patents on LIFE (which I can think should be forbidden), it would be Monsanto.
Please watch the documentary "Food Inc." and you'll see the true face of this horrible company.
I'm talking:
- seeds with suicide gens in them so farmers can only use them once
- plants that grow only once and do not provide seeds at all, so they have to be bought again at Monsanto
- 70 Monsanto employees scouring
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*sigh*
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I'm hoping you intended sarcasm and just forgot that you need to state it explicitly for anyone to know in text land.
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I'm hoping you intended sarcasm and just forgot that you need to state it explicitly for anyone to know in text land.
I didn't "forget" to state it explicitly, I'm just not worried about explaining myself for the idiots who don't get it.
How else do you expect (Score:2)
the Tyrell Corp. to maintain it's stranglehold on off world mining?
Not just in biology... (Score:2)
All patents, which are basically government granted monopolies [cat-v.org], are extremely damaging.
Biology patents, like software patents [cat-v.org], are just a particularly egregious example, but the same is true of patents in other fields.
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Re:I couldn't think of a car analogy (Score:4, Informative)
It's like a company that tries to patent an object that has four wheels, a steering wheel, a wind shield and an engine.
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Been done before [slashdot.org]. Fortunately the saving grace in that case was that the patent was on a specific type of engine, and thus ruled inapplicable to most of the cars being made at the time. On a more general note, this is why it's important that patents be for a specific implementation of an idea. If someone can tweak your idea to make it better, they have to be able to do so without runnin
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The Beatles would have problems with lots and lots of prior art in that case, where this isn't the case. If you want a music analogy, I'd say this is more like Les Paul patenting all music made with electrically amplified instruments.
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Think of the licensing fees we'd all owe his estate!
0 dollars?
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But that would be a lot of zeros!
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BTW, search uspto.gov for patents listing "venter, j craig" as an inventor & then do the same for "collins, francis" (head of the public HGP). Guess who has more patents?
You have to be careful with searches like this. There is such a thing as a defensive patent, where the patenter patents an idea to keep other people from patenting it and closing it off. I don't think I've ever used the same word in a sentence as much as in that one. For the sake of brevity you can read it as "patenter patents patent
Oooooh (Score:2)