{"id":43674,"date":"2009-11-17T17:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T22:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091105\/1133206816.shtml"},"modified":"2009-11-17T17:52:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T22:52:00","slug":"australian-patent-lawyers-claim-patenting-genes-is-necessary-for-biomedical-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/43674","title":{"rendered":"Australian Patent Lawyers Claim Patenting Genes Is Necessary For Biomedical Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here in the US, there’s an important legal battle going on over whether or not you can patent genes<\/a>. Not surprisingly, we’re very much against such a system, which gives a total monopoly to certain companies on doing certain types of genetic testing. It also makes no sense at all, as patents are supposed to be about promoting invention — not finding<\/i> something in nature that others can also find. Down in Australia, however, there’s a similar debate<\/a> going on, but in the legislative branch, rather than the judicial. Reader sinsi alerts us to the news of a recent panel discussion in Australia where a bunch of patent attorneys predicted the virtual collapse of the biotech industry in Australia<\/a> if firms weren’t able to patent genes.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, ridiculous. First of all, much of the research on these things is often done via government and university funding — and it’s often done for reasons other than locking up a monopoly on the technique. Reasons such as helping people live better lives (*gasp* — what a concept!). Or, more to the point, it’s done so that firms can sell an actual product. If they have to compete in the marketplace, that’s a good thing, as it pushes them to be more efficient and offer a better overall service, rather than just jacking up prices. And how do they offer a better overall service? Oh yeah, often by continuing to do more research and creating new breakthroughs.<\/p>\n

These sorts of claims of industries collapsing are moral panics and folk devils put forth by patent attorneys who are really afraid that it’s going to hurt their own<\/i> business. There’s simply no evidence at all that it harms the overall biomedical profession if they can’t patent the finding of naturally occurring genes.<\/p>\n

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Here in the US, there’s an important legal battle going on over whether or not you can patent genes. Not surprisingly, we’re very much against such a system, which gives a total monopoly to certain companies on doing certain types of genetic testing. It also makes no sense at all, as patents are supposed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}