Medical Patents Must Die
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Medical Patents Must Die
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Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#2How on earth is there not prior art (I think that's the term I want) for the functioning of a small part of the human metabolism? It seems to me rather obvious that the researcher, her/his ancestors, friends, you, and me all other humans constitute prior art to that patent. I struggle with similar questions when I see articles on how companies are patenting specific DNA sequences.
I guess my problem boils down to this. Isn't there a difference between a discovery and an invention? Logically I think there is. A discovery is a new understanding of an already existing reality while an invention is the creation of something new. On that difference it seems that the latter should be patentable but not the former. But if they truly have the patent claimed by the article, then our system allows for the patenting of discoveries! How bizarre. Are there other fields where discoveries are patentable. (Should Einstein have patented his theory of general relativity or E=mc^2?)
If Prometheus Labs had created a machine that measured and calculated the needed dosage change in a new and innovative way I could see a patent being granted, but not on this.
Could someone who has patent experience/expertise way in and help me here?
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#3How on earth is there not prior art (I think that's the term I want) for the functioning of a small part of the human metabolism? It seems to me rather obvious that the researcher, her/his ancestors, friends, you, and me all other humans constitute prior art to that patent. I struggle with similar questions when I see articles on how companies are patenting specific DNA sequences. I guess my problem boils down to thi…
I dont know how/what to think about this, also I didn't mean to include any other links , so this will be my last take for today. http://croak.eu/rDCDm9
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#4How on earth is there not prior art (I think that's the term I want) for the functioning of a small part of the human metabolism? It seems to me rather obvious that the researcher, her/his ancestors, friends, you, and me all other humans constitute prior art to that patent. I struggle with similar questions when I see articles on how companies are patenting specific DNA sequences. I guess my problem boils down to thi…
Discovery/invention is one of the classic ways of differentiating (you can patent inventions but not mere discoveries of facts), but even going back hundreds of years the line gets a bit murky. For example, a ton of 19th-century patents were for chemical synthesis processes, which more or less boils down to a patent on discovering that certain reaction pathways exist and can be feasibly used with standard equipment.
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#5The patent system reminds me of an airplane going down, but whenever I read statements like "Medical Patents Must Die" I remember that nobody has a solution to make it fly again. The captain might be wrong, but the first officer doesn't know how to fix it (which is a fundamental step of communicating concerns inside the cockpit - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management#Commun... ).
We don't know enough about the human body, the human genome, the diseases around us and their cure. Those things take huge amount of money to research and huge one-time payments that have no certainty at the end of the research tunnel. When a cure is found, no person alone can reimburse its cost. Abolishing patents via a blanket rule would make all medical capital fly out of the window and the only research performed would be the one in government-sponsored laboratories. If that's the solution we want to agree upon, be upfront and state it clearly, otherwise let's not destroy what works without better alternatives.
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#6Just to be clear, I think software and business model patents are ridiculous, but I think the hate the patent system gets on HN is not very constructive. Obviously it was put in place to solve some problems, but ended up causing/exacerbating other problems. My question is this, what is the better way of encouraging innovation and protecting the rights of inventors? I am not defending the current system here, I am just curious to see what people think would be a better system instead of endlessly bashing the system we have.
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#7How on earth is there not prior art (I think that's the term I want) for the functioning of a small part of the human metabolism? It seems to me rather obvious that the researcher, her/his ancestors, friends, you, and me all other humans constitute prior art to that patent. I struggle with similar questions when I see articles on how companies are patenting specific DNA sequences. I guess my problem boils down to thi…
I dont know how/what to think about this, also I didn't mean to include any other links , so this will be my last take for today. http://croak.eu/rDCDm9
I request that you please refrain from using audio to voice your opinion.
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#8One cannot patent anything that naturally exists. But one can patent strategies. Business methods, medical, and, until recently, tax strategies can be patented. Tax strategy patents were recently banned in the America Invents Act. There has been legislation to ban medical strategy/method patents, and frankly I'm surprised it hasn't been banned yet legislatively. And the federal courts in the past have limited business strategy patents (Bilski v. Kappos). It seems to me SCOTUS should move to limit medical strategy patents in their decision. But if they don't, this may spur Congress to actually do something.
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#9The patent system reminds me of an airplane going down, but whenever I read statements like "Medical Patents Must Die" I remember that nobody has a solution to make it fly again. The captain might be wrong, but the first officer doesn't know how to fix it (which is a fundamental step of communicating concerns inside the cockpit - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management#Commun... ). We don't know eno…
The article is not talking about drug patents. It is talking about a current case which will decide whether or not to allow patents on medical treatment, even when the patents on the drugs have expired. The patent in question in the case regards a method for adjusting the dose of a drug. Medicine has done without these patents until now.
Ars Technica had an article about this the other day, which I thought was more compelling than the linked post:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/oblivious-su...
Re: Medical Patents Must Die
#10Just to be clear, I think software and business model patents are ridiculous, but I think the hate the patent system gets on HN is not very constructive. Obviously it was put in place to solve some problems, but ended up causing/exacerbating other problems. My question is this, what is the better way of encouraging innovation and protecting the rights of inventors? I am not defending the current system here, I am jus…
The main issue seems to be the inability of the patent office to realize what's trivial and what's not when reviewing a patent.
It fails to do that because it's actually not a trivial thing to do at all when you're not familiar with the field: it is very difficult for a non-IT professional to take a look at Kruskal's pseudocode ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal%27s_algorithm#Descripti... ) and to state if it solves an existing pain or it's just describing trivial and intuitive, common-knowledge steps.
A solution would be to have patent reviewers splited in categories based on their professional accreditation and limit their ability to accept or deny patents to their field of expertise.