A top UK scientist who helped sequence the human genome has said efforts to patent the first synthetic life form would give its creator a monopoly on a range of genetic engineering.
Professor John Sulston said it would inhibit important research.
US-based Dr Craig Venter led the artificial life form research, details of which were published last week.
Well, you can "own" chemical compounds.
i think you can 'own' sections of human DNA too, a university in mass. was stopped from doing cancer tests on a section patented by some company. but i believe it was recently overturned in court.
This is the type of thing a World Court will have to be made for
Did they patent the sections of DNA itself or the technique used to isolate and analyze it?
Myriad Genetics controls all testing on the two breast cancer genes because they own the genes, lock stock and barrel. They patented them and no one else can legally test for them, or look at them, or even develop potential therapies that are based on them without Myriad's consent.
hmm it seems both...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/01/60minutes/main6354069.shtml
Myriad Genetics controls all testing on the two breast cancer genes because they own the genes, lock stock and barrel. They patented them and no one else can legally test for them, or look at them, or even develop potential therapies that are based on them without Myriad's consent.
that can't be possible, you can't patent something natural in the human body, maybe a way to extract it but not anything that would effect that gene
The J Craig Venter Institute is funded by a company called Synthetic Genomics. JCVI does not patent anything and is considered a non-profit research house. SG patents the results of research there and tries to monetize them.
SG has applied for 13 patents on synthetic genomes invested by JCVI. They will also patent the parts of the technology - so far as I know they already did both parts of this process in separate procedures (building a synthetic genome and transplanting one genome from one cell into another) so any novel techniques were probably already patented from those trials.
A significant and as yet unpublished part of the process involved tricking the host cell into accepting the synthetic DNA by suppressing an enzyme in the host cell that would have attacked the "invading" genetic material - they haven't disclosed how the trick was done and will definitely patent the technique as well.
I have a hypothetical question.
If the scenario is that they used the same techniques of inserting DNA (natural or synthetic) as natural occurring viruses, would those techniques still qualify for patenting ?
Or does exist a rule that natural occurring "techniques" cannot be patented ?