Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 156 posts

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#31

Post by rmc »

kybernetyk wrote: post #12
onewaystreet wrote: post #3

> This is a result that will have major practical consequences, and is likely to save thousands of lives. No, companies will stop doing research now.

>No, companies will stop doing research now. That's what I'm worried about, too. For example C60 [1] is a curious molecule that can't be patented anymore. In a rat study it showed to prolong the rats' lives by over 90% [2] by protecting the rats from cancer. Sadly there won't be any human study anytime soon (if at all) because it's just not financially viable without the possibility of patenting the stuff and extract…

There's enough billionares who want to live forever. They'll fund it, if only so their own lives last longer.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#32

Post by venomsnake »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #21
Cyph0n wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn't. Talented people would have little incentive to create something new.

People's incentive to create is the same as it always was: creative people just want to. What patents were set up to prevent, IIRC, was trade secrets - they were a way to bribe creators to publish their ideas rather than sit on them. IMO, they were a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Trade secrets would be reinvented. Locking an idea out of the commons for a whole patent term (and longer if they can attach new patents off…

But on the other hand reproducing the result without reading the patent, should be able to invalidate said patent. If I don't care how you achieved the one click purchase button, I should be able to have my implementation on my page.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#33

Post by JulianMorrison »

rmc wrote: post #31
kybernetyk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, companies will stop doing research now. That's what I'm worried about, too. For example C60 [1] is a curious molecule that can't be patented anymore. In a rat study it showed to prolong the rats' lives by over 90% [2] by protecting the rats from cancer. Sadly there won't be any human study anytime soon (if at all) because it's just not financially viable without the possibility of patenting the stuff and extract…

There's enough billionares who want to live forever. They'll fund it, if only so their own lives last longer.

You'd be surprised. It's hard to get people to fund SENS anti-ageing through which they could literally live forever. In general, humans don't have a survival instinct, only a "don't die right now" instinct.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#34

Post by personjerry »

Although we might be clear on what we perceive to be the right ruling, it is not always so simple. For example, what if we claimed in software that any software program, given that it is merely a series of bits, is therefore merely a number, and thus a "product of mathematics" not produced by man?

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#35

Post by lifeisstillgood »

mirimir wrote: post #10

Now, if we can just agree that natural products and traditional cures can't be patented. India has been fighting hard for that.

I think you are conflating several issues here.

Firstly there is a difference between natural product and traditional cures / medicine. See the below link for the recent Nobel prize, or just imagine the difference between chemical isolation of aspirin and understanding it's pathways and "chew some bark of that tree"

I think it is fair and valid for scientific inquiry to be considered seperate and more than traditional correlation.

However i also think that patents on scientific outcomes are a bad thing and in general should be avoided.

So, yes patent is bad. No don't give "traditional cures" any special protection, and don't give "natural products" any distinction from other areas of scientific inquiry.

Do have ethical committees however :-)

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/10/07/the-2015-nobel-...

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#36

Post by JulianMorrison »

venomsnake wrote: post #32
JulianMorrison wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's incentive to create is the same as it always was: creative people just want to. What patents were set up to prevent, IIRC, was trade secrets - they were a way to bribe creators to publish their ideas rather than sit on them. IMO, they were a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Trade secrets would be reinvented. Locking an idea out of the commons for a whole patent term (and longer if they can attach new patents off…

But on the other hand reproducing the result without reading the patent, should be able to invalidate said patent. If I don't care how you achieved the one click purchase button, I should be able to have my implementation on my page.

Invalidating patents may not be so hard in the abstract, but the trouble is you have to fight a long and legally technical court case to do it. With no certainty of winning even if you are right.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#37

Post by lifeisstillgood »

personjerry wrote: post #34

Although we might be clear on what we perceive to be the right ruling, it is not always so simple. For example, what if we claimed in software that any software program, given that it is merely a series of bits, is therefore merely a number, and thus a "product of mathematics" not produced by man?

Copyright is far and away the best IP category for software - I strongly argue it is a form of literacy anyway.

And I am not convinced there is any mathematics outside the mind of humans - it's an odd one, but is not maths a model of the world rather than the world itself?

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#38

Post by belorn »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #19
ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we could kill patents altogether that would be a much nicer step. Patents are an invention from another Era and make absolutely no sense nowadays, and we see them constantly abused to make our lives worse in the end.

I don't think they made any sense from the get go, not even in the steam age. In general, the first implementation of a good idea was a bad one, of limited use, not a well refined concept. And then the patent-holder sat on the patent until it expired, and then - finally - the whatever-it-was became a vital and widely used commodity as creativity started to be applied. So all it did was slow the pace of change.

Patents worked great for what they were intended for, which was for the English crown to raise funds outside of parliaments control, and later in the US when they used it to encourage the immigration of skilled workers.

The English crown had the big problem that its treasury was dictated by parliament during the 16th century, so it sold royal decrees (writ patents) granting exclusive rights. Parliament passed after an outburst of patenting by the monarch the then new Statute of Monopolies, which said that only Parliament might grant monopolies in statutory form and that only for new inventions.

The British North American settlers later recognized that their society benefited by disclosure and that disclosure supplemented the very weak technical literature of the world in which they lived. They had plentiful of free natural resources but a very small skilled workforce, so they wanted to encourage the immigration of skilled people on a deal which required the disclosure of their inventions in a publicly consult-able reference form.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#39

Post by rrmm »

venomsnake wrote: post #32
JulianMorrison wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's incentive to create is the same as it always was: creative people just want to. What patents were set up to prevent, IIRC, was trade secrets - they were a way to bribe creators to publish their ideas rather than sit on them. IMO, they were a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Trade secrets would be reinvented. Locking an idea out of the commons for a whole patent term (and longer if they can attach new patents off…

But on the other hand reproducing the result without reading the patent, should be able to invalidate said patent. If I don't care how you achieved the one click purchase button, I should be able to have my implementation on my page.

That's too low of a standard imo: just knowing something is possible and what that specific thing is, confers a lot of useful information.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#40

Post by lololomg »

onewaystreet wrote: post #3

> This is a result that will have major practical consequences, and is likely to save thousands of lives. No, companies will stop doing research now.

I literally can't tell if you're serious or if you're being sarcastic
Post reply on HN