Of course, SCOTUS would issue this decision while I was traveling. It's not as groundbreaking as anyone would hope, cuts a very narrow path ruling on Bilski's business method patent (not patent-eligible under 101) and little else. There are many nice quotes suggesting the Supremes don't want any more expansive of a reading of what might be patent-eligible, but neither do they seem to be unanimous in wanting to narrow it. All of which is to say, more status quo for software, business methods, and other such things. But what does it mean for the Myriad case? Well this also seems to be good news, as the Bilski decision relies on the holdings of Chakrabarthy,Gottschalk v. Benson, Diamond v. Diehr, and Parker v. Flook, which line of cases establishes the exception under 101 holding products of nature and abstract ideas ineligible for patent. Sweet relied on Bilski in rejecting the patented methods for the BRCA diagnostic test, holding that the mere comparison of two strings of DNA was too abstract to be eligible for patent under section 101.
As a brief philosophical aside: Abstract is not the correct, operative phrase in any of these cases, logically-speaking. Something is either abstract or concrete. There's the ratio "Pi" (which is an abstract entity) and there are circular objects, which are concrete. There is no continuum. What the courts all mean is "overly-general." So, "the placing of luncheon meat between two pieces of bread" encompasses too much, is overly general, and not patent-eligible under this notion. But a particular new, non-obvious, useful sandwich would be eligible.... More to come as I ruminate on the case and its various concurrences....
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Proof that science works
This week, a research team out of the Cleveland Clinic announced that they had successfully tested a breast cancer vaccine on mice. The work to develop this vaccine was made possible with a mere 1.5 million USD grant from the National Institutes of Health, a federal funding agency in the US. Oddly, while defenders of the Myriad patents on BRCA1 and 2 often claim that the diagnostic test wouldn't have been developed but for patents, and that the money generated by such patents is necessary for further breakthroughs in health, there is no evidence that Myriad has invested any of its over 300 million USD per year profits from the BRCA1 and 2 tests in developing any cures. Why would they? For the remaining 5 years of their patent, they can rake in their monopoly rates, generating huge profits above and beyond the costs of the original research, and not have to invest in any new research. They also now have a patent on the pancreatic cancer gene and can rake in more money from those diagnostics. So why bother with a cure?
Publicly-funded science, on the other hand, devoid of the conflict of interest generated by the corporate need for profits, works. The work on the breast cancer vaccine is showing just how. I could find no patent, either, registered for the work on the vaccine. Perhaps, like Jonas Salk, Dr. Vincent Tuohy would view such a patent as the equivalent of patenting the sun. Let's hope. Meanwhile, this story illustrates how science can work, and why the arguments regarding the necessity of patents to fuel medical breakthroughs is bunk.
Publicly-funded science, on the other hand, devoid of the conflict of interest generated by the corporate need for profits, works. The work on the breast cancer vaccine is showing just how. I could find no patent, either, registered for the work on the vaccine. Perhaps, like Jonas Salk, Dr. Vincent Tuohy would view such a patent as the equivalent of patenting the sun. Let's hope. Meanwhile, this story illustrates how science can work, and why the arguments regarding the necessity of patents to fuel medical breakthroughs is bunk.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Trailer for the movie, "Who Owns You?"
My co-producer, and the director of the documentary we are producing, Taylor Roesch, has put together an engaging trailer. The principal shooting for the doc is complete, and he lined up a great range of experts to speak on the subject. We will wrap up shooting late this summer here in The Netherlands, and plan to put together a rough cut in time for some of the festivals. I'm really proud of Taylor's work, please check it out:
Who Owns You? - A Documentary - Trailer from Taylor Roesch on Vimeo.
Friday, May 14, 2010
The tension mounts
I swear I will post soon, as soon as the Supreme Court rules on Bilski. That case is going to be a watershed moment, one way or another, for patents as it will decide the patentability of "business methods" and possibly more. Moreover, Judge Sweet used it heavily in deciding that the BRCA1 and 2 method claims were invalid. In the mean time, please check out an interview I recently did for the Philosophy Compass blog, The Philosopher's Eye. Keep your fingers crossed for the Bilski decision to come out next week!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
My Review of Luigi Palombi's book, Gene Cartels
It appears in this month's Script-ed, and since it's a creative commons license, I am posting it here as well:
"Book Review
Gene Cartels: Biotech patents in the age of free trade
Luigi Palombi
Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA (USA): Edward Elgar, 2009, 416 pp, £85, ISBN 978 1 84720 836 1 (hbk).
DOI: 10.2966/scrip.070110.230
It is a shame that there are so few existing copies of Luigi Palombi’s Gene Cartels. The initial press run for this remarkable book was apparently less than 1000, yet this is a book that every policy maker even remotely connected to issues of patents, economics, and biotech should read.
Palombi’s background is in law. He worked for years as a patent lawyer, writing and arguing for biotech patents. Over time, he grew disenchanted with the scope and reach of patents being granted on biotechnology “innovations”, especially as more and more patents began to be granted further “upstream”, over things that were not inventions, but rather discoveries. He is now a researcher with the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University. He devotes his research and activism to eliminating “gene patents” and his magnum opus on the legal case against gene patents works methodically through not just recent law on the subject but the history of patent law itself.
Palombi traces the history of patent from its historical roots as a mode of privilege granted by sovereigns and places current debates about both the effectiveness and justice of such monopolies into much needed context. Some modern defenders of patents fail to discern that intellectual property is an artificial device which skews free markets, tending instead to ignore the unnatural, state-sponsored nature of the patent monopoly. Palombi deftly shows us otherwise and comes out strongly, backed both by history and legal theory, against patents as either a necessary or efficient economic tool for innovation. He moves deliberately through a useful discussion of modern day patent regimes and the effects of globalisation and harmonisation of IP regimes, primarily with those of the US and western democracies. He then moves on, just about 200 pages in, to grapple with the subject of biotech patents, and specifically those on genes.
Taking a clear stand against the modern trend in US patent law and extending this to other patent regimes, Palombi rejects the central notion that mere “isolation” or an element of nature is sufficiently inventive to warrant a patent. In a pivotal chapter, the “isolation contrivance” is traced through the cases that gave it credence, and destroyed piece by piece as based upon flawed legal reasoning. It is the lynchpin of the argument favouring patents on “isolated” gene sequences and Palombi shows how this now accepted dicta has resulted in legal nonsense that can no longer stand scrutiny – especially the type of methodical scrutiny Palombi provides.
Simply put, Palombi shows, through careful examination of the evolution of the law regarding “isolated and purified” natural products that patents extended to them defy reason as well as the purposes of intellectual property law itself. The remaining hundred and some pages provide the most explicit, detailed, and definitive arguments against the legality of gene patents so far. He takes us through patents on EPO, adrenaline, genetically-engineered, recombinant bacteria, and then finally through modern-day diagnostic patents on naturally-occurring mutations to naturally-occurring genes, such as Myriad’s patents on the BRCA1 and 2 gene mutations whose presence indicates a propensity for breast and ovarian cancers. In each case, he shows through the legal cases how the law has been perverted from its original intention to reward invention to become a prize doled out now for mere discoveries – the age-old territories of the sciences rather than industry.
Critical to Palombi’s work is his detailed discussion of both the legal and practical consequences of the current situation. The cartels afforded by gene patents, he argues, are unprecedented in the law, gaining monopolies over much more than the mere sequences but also to any and all protein products of those sequences. These cartels then control every facet of a particular gene’s expression, including any treatments that might be developed for genetic diseases, as well as all diagnostic tools. Moreover, as is made clear in the case of the BRCA 1 and 2 patents, research is legally, and sometimes practically, road blocked by such patents.
Palombi’s analysis is deep and broad, providing technical, legal details of the gene patent situation around the world. Influenced as it has been by US laws and corporations, gene patents have now spread throughout Europe and other industrialised nations, despite the proclamation of the various partners in the Human Genome Project that the human genome was our “common heritage”. He concludes his discussion, having demolished the notion that isolation of genes is inventive in any sense previously necessary for patents, by discussing in depth the history of the BRCA1 and 2 patents, and pondering what the current situation means for research in synthetic biology. His prognosis is bleak and his conclusions are justified by his elaborate recounting of not just the errors but ultimate effects of gene patents for both basic science and clinical practice.
This book is essential ammunition for those who oppose gene patenting, and lays out the legal case expertly. My own book, Who Owns You? (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), was motivated by similar concerns, and makes an ethical case against gene patents from a philosophical perspective but I wish I had had Palombi’s book at my disposal when I was writing, because his legal case is iron-clad and unassailable. Not only will the reader be left wondering how we got to the point where unaltered genetic sequences are afforded patents, but he or she will be moved to confront the policy-makers and jurists who now stand poised to be able to finally stop this practice, to follow the dictate of law, logic, and justice, and to liberate the genome as the common heritage that it is once again.
David Koepsell
Professor, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
© David Koepsell 2010"
"Book Review
Gene Cartels: Biotech patents in the age of free trade
Luigi Palombi
Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA (USA): Edward Elgar, 2009, 416 pp, £85, ISBN 978 1 84720 836 1 (hbk).
DOI: 10.2966/scrip.070110.230
It is a shame that there are so few existing copies of Luigi Palombi’s Gene Cartels. The initial press run for this remarkable book was apparently less than 1000, yet this is a book that every policy maker even remotely connected to issues of patents, economics, and biotech should read.
Palombi’s background is in law. He worked for years as a patent lawyer, writing and arguing for biotech patents. Over time, he grew disenchanted with the scope and reach of patents being granted on biotechnology “innovations”, especially as more and more patents began to be granted further “upstream”, over things that were not inventions, but rather discoveries. He is now a researcher with the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University. He devotes his research and activism to eliminating “gene patents” and his magnum opus on the legal case against gene patents works methodically through not just recent law on the subject but the history of patent law itself.
Palombi traces the history of patent from its historical roots as a mode of privilege granted by sovereigns and places current debates about both the effectiveness and justice of such monopolies into much needed context. Some modern defenders of patents fail to discern that intellectual property is an artificial device which skews free markets, tending instead to ignore the unnatural, state-sponsored nature of the patent monopoly. Palombi deftly shows us otherwise and comes out strongly, backed both by history and legal theory, against patents as either a necessary or efficient economic tool for innovation. He moves deliberately through a useful discussion of modern day patent regimes and the effects of globalisation and harmonisation of IP regimes, primarily with those of the US and western democracies. He then moves on, just about 200 pages in, to grapple with the subject of biotech patents, and specifically those on genes.
Taking a clear stand against the modern trend in US patent law and extending this to other patent regimes, Palombi rejects the central notion that mere “isolation” or an element of nature is sufficiently inventive to warrant a patent. In a pivotal chapter, the “isolation contrivance” is traced through the cases that gave it credence, and destroyed piece by piece as based upon flawed legal reasoning. It is the lynchpin of the argument favouring patents on “isolated” gene sequences and Palombi shows how this now accepted dicta has resulted in legal nonsense that can no longer stand scrutiny – especially the type of methodical scrutiny Palombi provides.
Simply put, Palombi shows, through careful examination of the evolution of the law regarding “isolated and purified” natural products that patents extended to them defy reason as well as the purposes of intellectual property law itself. The remaining hundred and some pages provide the most explicit, detailed, and definitive arguments against the legality of gene patents so far. He takes us through patents on EPO, adrenaline, genetically-engineered, recombinant bacteria, and then finally through modern-day diagnostic patents on naturally-occurring mutations to naturally-occurring genes, such as Myriad’s patents on the BRCA1 and 2 gene mutations whose presence indicates a propensity for breast and ovarian cancers. In each case, he shows through the legal cases how the law has been perverted from its original intention to reward invention to become a prize doled out now for mere discoveries – the age-old territories of the sciences rather than industry.
Critical to Palombi’s work is his detailed discussion of both the legal and practical consequences of the current situation. The cartels afforded by gene patents, he argues, are unprecedented in the law, gaining monopolies over much more than the mere sequences but also to any and all protein products of those sequences. These cartels then control every facet of a particular gene’s expression, including any treatments that might be developed for genetic diseases, as well as all diagnostic tools. Moreover, as is made clear in the case of the BRCA 1 and 2 patents, research is legally, and sometimes practically, road blocked by such patents.
Palombi’s analysis is deep and broad, providing technical, legal details of the gene patent situation around the world. Influenced as it has been by US laws and corporations, gene patents have now spread throughout Europe and other industrialised nations, despite the proclamation of the various partners in the Human Genome Project that the human genome was our “common heritage”. He concludes his discussion, having demolished the notion that isolation of genes is inventive in any sense previously necessary for patents, by discussing in depth the history of the BRCA1 and 2 patents, and pondering what the current situation means for research in synthetic biology. His prognosis is bleak and his conclusions are justified by his elaborate recounting of not just the errors but ultimate effects of gene patents for both basic science and clinical practice.
This book is essential ammunition for those who oppose gene patenting, and lays out the legal case expertly. My own book, Who Owns You? (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), was motivated by similar concerns, and makes an ethical case against gene patents from a philosophical perspective but I wish I had had Palombi’s book at my disposal when I was writing, because his legal case is iron-clad and unassailable. Not only will the reader be left wondering how we got to the point where unaltered genetic sequences are afforded patents, but he or she will be moved to confront the policy-makers and jurists who now stand poised to be able to finally stop this practice, to follow the dictate of law, logic, and justice, and to liberate the genome as the common heritage that it is once again.
David Koepsell
Professor, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
© David Koepsell 2010"
Monday, April 5, 2010
60 Minutes
60 Minutes did a great job with their segment, "Patented". It really is worth watching. Kudos to all involved, including Kevin Noonan, with whom I have sparred on the subject, who did a good job standing up for his side. I hope he'll take part in the documentary we are making as well. It is worth noting that the "lies" Noonan accused me of were the same statements made by Morley Safer on the 60 Minutes segment, though he seems a bit more politic in his references to the TV show than to my book (which he hadn't read, by his own admission, at the time).
This summer, Taylor and I should be able to edit something together in time, hopefully, for a couple festivals, perhaps the Rotterdam Film Festival here in Europe would be a good start. Overall, the timing on this subject really has been amazing. Little did I know when writing my book that the ACLU would bring this suit, nor especially that the time-table on the suit would coincide so well with the launch of the book. I'm been privileged to meet so many activists and academics involved in this debate at this critical time, and really am in awe of their commitment. Glad to see such momentum and media attention finally for this critical issue.
This summer, Taylor and I should be able to edit something together in time, hopefully, for a couple festivals, perhaps the Rotterdam Film Festival here in Europe would be a good start. Overall, the timing on this subject really has been amazing. Little did I know when writing my book that the ACLU would bring this suit, nor especially that the time-table on the suit would coincide so well with the launch of the book. I'm been privileged to meet so many activists and academics involved in this debate at this critical time, and really am in awe of their commitment. Glad to see such momentum and media attention finally for this critical issue.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Two brief media hits
An op-ed co-authored with Ken Alfano in the Washington Times today, and a radio interview this morning on The Takeaway, out of WNYC, syndicated nationally in the US. A couple more, potentially big, are in the works. I did a lengthy pre-interview yesterday with a US national network. The good news is that this decision got the media to finally pay some attention to this issue, and the momentum is now with our side of the story. I cannot praise enough those with both the ACLU and Public Patent Foundation for bringing this lawsuit, and calling much needed attention to the problem of gene patents. More to come...
**UPDATE** Here's an excellent piece from Forbes explaining why the technology of cheap sequencing, and the potentially profitable and beneficial services that could be offered, demand that gene patents cease.
**UPDATE 2** so, apparently Joseph Priestley could have (or could not have) patented O2. Read through all the comments to see a truly Alice in Wonderland chain of reasoning.
**UPDATE** Here's an excellent piece from Forbes explaining why the technology of cheap sequencing, and the potentially profitable and beneficial services that could be offered, demand that gene patents cease.
**UPDATE 2** so, apparently Joseph Priestley could have (or could not have) patented O2. Read through all the comments to see a truly Alice in Wonderland chain of reasoning.
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