Protecting Intellectual Property

The importance of patents is a requisite for an inventor or else, there would be no such thing as invention! This is because without IP, inventors would have no way of supporting themselves and making money. What is IP? These are the exclusive rights granted to the creator who invented novel piece of work. Its purpose is to prevent other people from marketing it without paying royalties to the inventor.

For an invention to be patented, it must be something novel, not an obvious extension of present knowledge, and you cannot patent a mere discovery. It has to have a practical use. The patent system has evolved over centuries around products of industry like mechanical inventions, science processes and various fields.

Up to about 1980, products of nature were normally excluded. You couldn't patent a plant, say. But once biotechnology began to discover ways of modifying living organisms, first bacteria and then plants and animals, pressure mounted to allow patents on these. Genetic research is expensive and it often takes years from discovery to market. In a competitive world, companies say they have a legitimate need to know they have a chance to protect their large research investment with a patent. The question is how far should this be taken? The EU Directive has aroused widespread criticism that it has bowed to the demands of industry to the point that basic public values were simply overridden.

One of the hottest issue lately is 'Should we allow patents on living organisms, and naturally occuring genes?' About 2 months ago, Myriad Genetics Inc. lost a U.S. court ruling over its patents for a way to detect inherited breast cancer in a decision that may lead to other challenges to gene-related patents. The patent was declared invalid my the US court on the grounds against law of nature. Now all naturally occurring gene patents are invalid by the reasoning of this opinion. This is really a sea change for patents in life sciences.

The added concern is that patenting genetic discoveries implies an attitude of "winner takes all" over knowledge. Logically, this would bring an end to the notion of discovery and mean that anything could commercialised. Therefore, the patent lawyers should install a proper system which looks into ethical assessment to all kinds of invention while its patent is being assessed, to enable society to decide whether it wants it to be marketed or not.

This issue urgently needs to be addressed, if this vital area of science is to remain accountable to the public and not driven by commercial interests alone.