🚀 go-pugleaf

The news below was reported in the 22 February 1992 edition of New Scientist
magazine. I find it more disturbing than a corporation being allowed to patent
the XORing of a screen pixel, or the USE of a disk drive. Will I soon be
obliged to pay royalties when my DNA does its stuff? "I'm sorry Mr. Carter 
but your present financial position will not allow you to recover from that
nasty cold; you can't afford the lymphocyte activity."

On the other hand, might this sort of stuff assist in precipitating a crisis
in which the discovery of profound truths in nature, the use of techniques
obvious to a skilled person, natural biological software, computer software,
music, fiction, the design of the superconducting hairdryer  and other 
intellectual property must be considered by an informed legislature acting for
the good of the members of the society that elected it rather than the first 
vested interest to show up? Was Trotsky right when he said 'Worse is better'?

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                    US GENE PLAN 'MAKES A MOCKERY OF PATENTS'

                                  Andy Coghlan

European scientists involved with human genome research reacted angrily to
news that American researchers have applied for patents on more than 2000
newly isolated stretches of DNA.

[ Stuff omitted ]

European researchers are concerned that the Americans do not know the entire
sequences or functions of the genes they are patenting. This makes a mockery
of the concept of a patent, they say. 

[ Much stuff omitted ]

In addition, patents were originally devised for inventions, not discoveries.
"The main question is whether [the NIH] has made an invention. My opinion is
that they have not. They have made a collection of discoveries," said Norman
Carey, a British specialist in biotechnology patents. "But if it looks as 
though [the application] is going to work, Europe will have to do it as well."

John Savin of Britain's Centre for the Exploitation of Science and 
Technology, a think-tank funded by industry and the government, thinks that 
American patents could cause future problems. He says that if a company 
develops a useful drug based on brain proteins, the NIH may appear "out of the
woodwork" and demand royalties because it had earlier patented a DNA sequence 
from which the drug was derived.

[ Stuff omitted ]

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Can FSF publish the algorithms for taking fractions and copyleft them to
everyone except governments? Then they wouldn't be allowed to calculate taxes.
Rational legislation may then be forthcoming.

Alan Carter.

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My opinions are my own and have nothing to do with my clients or employers.
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