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Do not ask me if this is a good or bad idea, I don't know, but I have an aversion to "your money, or your life" medicine.
Put simply, it's a device that generates possible combinations of ATGC just as alphabetic code. Once these mentioned in public, that's prior art, and so no patent.
My problem
is this, webspace is cheap these days, but doing a quick calculation on gnumeric just to to do the first 24 combinations would take (at 1000 a second) 1115.68912001624 years.
Just wondering if any halfbaker knows a slight shortcut?
I expect to be fishboned within 2.54cm of my life for this one...
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First, no to the idea. A patent is protection for the item
itself.
Therefore simply having published the letter sequence will
not prevent it from being patented. |
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Second, no to the concept. If a biotech company can't
make
money of the results of their research, the end result is
that
they won't do the research. Yes, it's bad that there are
treatments out there that people don't have access to
simply because they can't afford it. But at least the
treatment exists, and when it does come out of patent
protection, more people will have access to it. |
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If you don't like that approach, fine. Raise the several
hundred million it takes to run a research and clinical
trial program, and give the results away free, but don't
expect others to. |
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More fundamentally, a patent is supposed to protect something
associated with a "use". If you can't specify an associated use for a
particular DNA letter sequence (like a gene that codes for a particular
protein), you can't get a patent. Note that the Human Genome Project
already has ALL the letters in average human DNA, and I do think it is
public data.... |
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As an aside, if it is a naturally occurring sequence, it's no
longer patentable in the US. A use for it may be, but the
genes themselves are not. |
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You can't patent (anywhere, as far as I know) a
naturally-occurring sequence, even if there's no prior
art. What is patentable is an application - for
example, a test to detect if someone has a particular
sequence, as an indicator of disease susceptibility
etc. |
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The idea that evil corporations can patent our own
genes out from under us is a straw gibbon. |
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// Raise the several hundred million it takes to run a
research and clinical trial program, and give the
results away free, but don't expect others to.// |
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Actually, they already have. The human genome
sequence is publicly available, and was from Day1 of
the project. (There was a parallel commercial
project, but in the end it was beat hollow by the
public project.) Several billion dollars' worth of
research was done and given away for free. |
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The same is true of almost all other genomes - they
are made available free online from day 1. There are
exceptions - for example, some crop species were
sequenced with private money and kept private for
some time; however, for most of these species,
public research led to freely-available genome
sequences anyway. |
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This whole idea belies a deep misunderhension of (a)
the patent system (b) companies and (c) public
genome sequences. |
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That was the research side of it. And don't get me wrong, I
love publicly funded research, and wish more of my tax
dollars went into it. |
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But the vast majority of new drug/biologic research, and
definitely all or nearly all clinical trials, are privately funded
with the intent to make a profit. |
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My argument is with [nrm] who seems to assume that
companies are out there just patenting arbitrary
genes, and that publishing all possible sequences
would somehow prevent this. They aren't and it
wouldn't. |
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No, it's generally patents. The saleable "thing" is, for
example, a diagnostic kit based on the detection of a
particular sequence variant. |
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Right, I'm going to walk away from this, as it was a 2am idea...but.. |
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// Therefore simply having published the letter sequence will not prevent it |
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An idea is a patent, no one actually has to turn up at a patent office with a working machine, it just has to be plausible that it would work and be novel. So if somebody says "this combination of ATGC might be useful therapeutically" that seems like a reasonable basis for a patent, if it turns out not be true, it's invalid. Anyway, I'm not talking about patenting, I'm talking about prior art. |
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I did actually bother to read up beforehand, so I know that the human genome is not being patented, however artificial dna can be patented. Yes, the money comes from the use of patent, not from the patent itself, so the breast cancer gene makes money by its use in a diagnostic way. |
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I'll toddle off and see if I can't find someway to do this in less than 1115.68912001624 years. Damn, I have to invent an immortality treatment just to get to finish the project, typical. |
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I could ramble on ad nauseum about the topic, but I'll
try and be brief. The gene patents are for isolated
genes. Isolating the genes means getting a gene
segment and putting caps on each end. The patent
has to describe a use of the gene, not just the gene
itself. Genes are patentable in Australia but not US. |
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//The patent has to describe a use of the gene, not just the gene itself. |
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I did say "this combination of ATGC might be useful therapeutically.." which could then be followed by "for" and a list of every aliment known to mankind, and chuck in a few likely future possibilities like banana flu, penguin elbow and all politicians being unable to lie. With caps on the end, as you suggest. Loner sequence the better, as less likely to turn up in nature. |
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But I agree. Game over for this post. Presumably it'll turn up again in 3098AD when all this is completely irrelevant. |
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The use of the gene must be substantial, credible and
specific, so an all-ailments disclosure is not adequate
(either as a prior art disclosure or as a patent
application) |
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So, just a search function added to the website, when a
researcher checks the site for scrofula, it comes up with a
page that gives all the possible gene combinations and says
"xxxxxx could be used in a therapy to treat scrofula", then
logs the date and IP address, and the researcher has now
created
the prior art. |
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That would save me an awful lot of processing power. Of
course if they don`t search then maybe they miss another
reference which was already there.... |
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Anyway, I`m supposed to be not doing this. (goes back to
the PHP, drops a <? on own foot, says rude word) |
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Again, it doesn't work that way. Such information is
not credible. |
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A working model is not required at the patent office,
but evidence that the concept can work is. |
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//evidence that the concept can work. |
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Is see...so everytime Apple patent something, they truck all the evidence down to the patent office... |
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Anyway, going off here for a while, I have too spare time now and just feel like I'm monopolising everything. So, you'll have to make facile comments yourselves for a while. TTFN. |
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Yes. Try actually reading the disclosure in the patent. It
covers the complete operation of the device. |
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[MechE] is right. A patent has to include some fairly
detailed supporting evidence that the thing works. |
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