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Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

arstechnica.com

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Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#131

Post by toomuchtodo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #130
toomuchtodo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come now. Boeing and the ULA are not SpaceX competitors. They're a last gasp attempt to keep the existing pork/gravy train of cost plus contracting and congressional district graft in place.

> Boeing and the ULA are not SpaceX competitors. They're a last gasp attempt to keep the existing pork/gravy train of cost plus contracting and congressional district graft in place. No, Boeing and the other ULA members (both as ULA and separately) are SpaceX competitors for (particularly) government contract work, what you call "congressional district graft" is part of the game they play to maximize the value and du…

We'll agree to disagree (I don't mean any offense). SpaceX exists to drive the cost of launch services down. Boeing and the ULA exist to profit. My opinion, of course.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#132

Post by rayiner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #126
rayiner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: what kind of valuable things would still be produced? You'll still get iPhones, but will you get ARM cores or Snapdragon chipsets or LTE or MPEG4 or pills that cure Hep-C? The bigger picture is that almost all hard R&D takes place under the umbrella of some sort of protection from copying. Intel spends billions a year on semiconductor R&D, and protects it with trade secrets. Pharma companies spend bi…

I want to point out that SpaceX doesn't patent any of their tech, as their competitors are sovereign states that would have no problem copying the technology.

SpaceX is a great example of the Google/Facebook situation. When you sell a service, and not a product people can take apart and reverse-engineer, you've got built-in protection from copying.

Pervasive Internet and the move to putting logic on the server definitely outmodes many uses for patents, though. Take Siri. SRI invented the technology, spun off a company with the IP, which was purchased by Apple. I don't think that transaction would've happened without patent protection. But today you have an alternative model. Instead of licensing voice recognition technology for integration into products, you can provide the algorithm as a service. Now, the source code stays safely on the server side where nobody can decompile it to figure out how it works.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#133

Post by toomuchtodo »

rayiner wrote: post #132
toomuchtodo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to point out that SpaceX doesn't patent any of their tech, as their competitors are sovereign states that would have no problem copying the technology.

SpaceX is a great example of the Google/Facebook situation. When you sell a service, and not a product people can take apart and reverse-engineer, you've got built-in protection from copying. Pervasive Internet and the move to putting logic on the server definitely outmodes many uses for patents, though. Take Siri. SRI invented the technology, spun off a company with the IP, which was purchased by Apple. I don't thin…

This is very true. At the same time though, through the commidification of computing resources, as well as tooling continuing to advance, open source alternatives are reaching parity.

Humor me. When Gmail first came out, it was revolutionary. Now, you could host your own clone for $10-20/month using containerized Elastic Search indexing all of your email, with a small virtual machine ingesting your email from the internet, and providing it to you over JSON to your local mail client or through a web interface.

Voice recognition could follow the same trajectory. Computing power will increase, storage costs will continue to plummet (I've mentioned this multiple times on HN, but Samsung is predicting 128TB SSD drives in 3 years).

You don't need patents anymore, as you mentioned, because you can provide the service, not the underlying source code. But you still need to monetize quickly (if that's your goal), because the rising tide of technology can quickly supplant your lead with other competitors or open source options.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#134

Post by dragonwriter »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #131
dragonwriter wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing and the ULA are not SpaceX competitors. They're a last gasp attempt to keep the existing pork/gravy train of cost plus contracting and congressional district graft in place. No, Boeing and the other ULA members (both as ULA and separately) are SpaceX competitors for (particularly) government contract work, what you call "congressional district graft" is part of the game they play to maximize the value and du…

We'll agree to disagree (I don't mean any offense). SpaceX exists to drive the cost of launch services down. Boeing and the ULA exist to profit. My opinion, of course.

SpaceX isn't a charity. It exists to profit, even if it is funded by investors who are willing to accept not profiting in the short term to build the business to the point where it can operate profitably.

Now, in order to profit, it has to differentiate itself from incumbents somehow, and the opportunity it is built around to do that is regarding efficiencies that allow it to offer launch services at lower costs. But, it is competing directly with ULA for business, as a simple matter of concrete fact.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#135

Post by rayiner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #133
rayiner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX is a great example of the Google/Facebook situation. When you sell a service, and not a product people can take apart and reverse-engineer, you've got built-in protection from copying. Pervasive Internet and the move to putting logic on the server definitely outmodes many uses for patents, though. Take Siri. SRI invented the technology, spun off a company with the IP, which was purchased by Apple. I don't thin…

This is very true. At the same time though, through the commidification of computing resources, as well as tooling continuing to advance, open source alternatives are reaching parity. Humor me. When Gmail first came out, it was revolutionary. Now, you could host your own clone for $10-20/month using containerized Elastic Search indexing all of your email, with a small virtual machine ingesting your email from the int…

Maybe or maybe not. Open source still lags far behind when it comes to "hard" algorithms that require domain expertise to design: OCR, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, etc.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#136

Post by sdenton4 »

kbenson wrote: post #106
icanhackit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make some compelling points but I'm still not convinced that this form of protectionism is the only avenue to innovation. The strength of a company is often in its organization, processes, location, and systems which are difficult to copy in a cohesive way without being gifted with similar circumstances. Why can't a company's strength and success in the marketplace be defined by these characteristics as opposed t…

Let's not reduce this argument to innovation for companies . Individuals innovate and patent as well. There is a tendency to focus purely on the negative effects of a system that seems to be failing it's purpose. It's important to understand the system as a whole, and it's history. Has the patent system ever functioned for the purpose it was designed for? If it isn't functioning correctly now, is that in part or in w…

Individual patents are a corner case that's hardly worth sneezing about. They typically come up in these sorts of conversations in the same way that, say, Monsanto will cry about protecting small farmers while proposing rule changes that let it get away with whole new classes of abuse...

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#137

Post by dbbolton »

mcv wrote: post #112

Did Myriad really claim to own the gene itself as their invention? If so, there are a lot of people who'd probably like to sue them for infecting them with that invention. It seems to me that all Myriad could possibly patent, is a unique detection method for that gene. But that wouldn't stop anyone from using a different detection method. But what interests me more about this case is that the article expects an Austr…

SCOTUS struck down patents on naturally occurring gene sequences themselves and decided that the "mere isolation" thereof cannot be patented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ass%27n_for_Molecular_Patholog...

However, "artificial" sequences can be. I'm not aware of any test cases that establish boundaries on the difference though. It would be logical to assume you'd have to alter the nucleotide sequence to the extent that the resulting peptide or protein is not naturally occurring (e.g. changing a TTT codon to TTC wouldn't suffice, since both will ultimately be translated into phenylalanine).

Contrary to this reasoning, complementary DNA is patentable in the US on the grounds that it's "not naturally occurring". So, if you take the mRNA corresponding to an un-patentable DNA sequence and mix it with a few enzymes and nucleotides that react in a deterministic fashion, you can then patent the sequence of the final product:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_DNA

In a gross oversimplification, it's almost as if the court said: "you can't patent natural English words, but you can patent the ROT13 versions of them".

But regarding methods, the majority opinion clearly said they're fair game (just as you can't patent gold, but you could patent a novel approach to mining or extracting it) and there are several valid examples in the US today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_patents_in_the_Unit...

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#138

Post by dougabug »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #71
mirimir wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are excellent points. There's no doubt that multinationals have gamed the global patent, copyright and trademark systems. On the other hand, it is plausible that the possibility of limited monopoly would promote innovation. But how would one measure costs vs benefits?

It's arguable that limited monopoly promotes the first innovation. But it should be obvious, it prevents all the possible third party innovations that riff off the first. It's easy to miss the dog that didn't bark, or the improvement that couldn't be sold.

There's also the question of inequality. Granting monopolies exacerbates inequality, so a hypothetical short term boost to productivity growth might not translate into meaningfully better quality of life for most people. Government engineered barriers to competitive use of specific ideas could undermine the bargaining power of workers, and artificially inflate or support prices of key goods.

It seems like an innovation supporting tax would be less restrictive, while still rewarding useful innovations that the market somehow fails to reward.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#139

Post by caskance »

nickbauman wrote: post #119
epmatsw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a misleading question. I don't think anyone is arguing that all innovation would go away if the patent system was removed. However, it seems possible that innovations that require high initial investment and low ongoing costs (medications, gene patents, etc.) would be produced at a lower rate if the incentives the current system provides were removed.

Big investments (today it's things like the Internet, Space Exploration; long ago it was the Roman naval assault bridge, the Library of Alexandria) always require state-led investment for sustainability. Copying protection have almost nothing to do with them.

The protection IS a state investment. It's just contributing the threat of resources rather than actual resources, which is even more efficient.

Re: Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision

#140

Post by SilasX »

icanhackit wrote: post #75

Looking at some of the for and against arguments regarding patents, let's play a mental game: would new, valuable things still be created if the patent system didn't exist? I think yes. The creator wouldn't necessarily benefit directly, but in a way we all indirectly benefit from new technology and ideas. Much the same as it would be better for the poor to have free or affordable essential health care, our society wo…

You can always waive IP rights in a system that reverse is not true (i.e. conditionally opt-in to IP rights in a system that categorically rejects them).

Likewise, you can give away all the physical stuff you want, but it's great that the rights exist in the first place.

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