Supreme Court Decision on Gene Patents

[quote=Pheyniex]i always had the opinion that atomic combinations (molecules) and other things like gestures were silly stuff to regard as patentable. In some cases it simply forbids any kind of market competition. regardless, to an extremist pov, it would risk turning people into corporate property, due to genome patent.[/quote]

[quote=lifebaka][quote=Bioalchemist] The point I have been thinking about is: would anyone really know about this gene that they tried to patent unless they had patented it? I may be wrong but I don't think they are required to provide the location of this gene and its function when selling their product. This is the two sided sword of patents...yes you can protect your intellectual property IF you can prove that someone else stole it, but by doing so you have to release a certain amount of details regarding your gene/technique/machine that gets people thinking about it to make it themselves in some cases. [/quote] While I don't know terribly much about the biology/chemistry involved, I do know a few things about US intellectual property law (even though I'm not a lawyer). I'm going to read over [url=http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-398_8njq.pdf]the actual decision[/url] some time over the weekend, but I do have a few insights that I'm pretty confident in without reading it. First, existing DNA patents (of the sort the Supreme Court just said aren't okay) are retroactively abolished. That's generally how Supreme Court decisions work, so I'd highly expect that it'll be how this one works. As I don't know exactly what the patents themselves are, I have no clue what the fallout of this would be. Second, it's possible that nothing will change going forward. While companies might not be able to patent human DNA sequences, their processes and such for isolating certain genes, as well as which gene's they're actually isolating, could still be protected as trade secrets, which is basically going to mean zero change as long as companies take precautions to protect those secrets. The net result of which could be that everything continues basically as it has before, except that companies make use of trade secret laws instead of patent law. Which, probably, is better; trade secret law makes a hell of a lot more sense than a lot of what is and isn't patentable. Third, I forgot that disallowing human DNA patents could actually result in a more open researching environment, which is generally better at allowing more research to be possible, which generally means more innovation in treatments, tests, etc. So there's another factor in how this could turn out that I hadn't mentioned before.[/quote]

[quote=Bioalchemist]^ yeah we are on the same page with this though I did not know that the current patents will be retroactively abolished so thanks for that. correct. processes etc. will always be under the realm of patent worthy. trade secrets are indeed in many cases better for the reason I stated regarding the 'two sided sword' approach to patents. unless you can ensure that by protecting your property will create enough royalties from people using it that it will make up for the public knowledge the patent creates. yes this is true disallowing DNA patents will lead to more work on isolated genes that have been identified as specific to given processes. but as you also said this could lead to loss if a good deal of resources were put into identifying/isolated the gene and the return was not met because the discovery is open to the market, which could decrease research or simply decrease the resources put towards it for fear that the return will not surpass the investment because long term profit is not guaranteed.[/quote]