[ExI] Gene Patents: Good or Bad?

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> IMO, apart from the commercial considerations of patenting a process or invention, the question is: Does/should anyone have the right to patent something like a gene or a sequence of genes?  I think the answer is pretty obvious, but maybe I'm too attached to the idea that someone else shouldn't have legal rights over something that my body has had since birth, that nobody invented, to think rationally about it.
>
### This is argument against gene patents is akin to saying you can't
patent a hemoglobin-based oxygen-carrying drug, since we all have been
using hemoglobin for that purpose since before the words "hemoglobin"
and "oxygen" were first coined. Do you notice the fallacy here?

Being the first to discover the existence of a gene, its physical
structure and function clearly make you an inventor (see definition of
invention in the Patent Act). Unknowingly using a naturally occurring
gene does not. An inventor then may claim rights to his invention, and
the fact that you are in possession of trillions of copies of a gene
doesn't give you any claims on his property.


Rafal