Analysis Of The Gower Review Of Intellectual Property Reported

We cannot obtain a “Yes” or “No” answer on “Will the Supreme Court’s decision affect the amount of research that is conducted to find naturally occurring disease-causing DNA sequences”. It is because the statue is clearly stated that things that are created or invented can be applied to obtain a patent when those things are (1) novel, (2) useful, and (3) nonobvious (Cheeseman, 2015, P.135). Although discovering the disease-causing DNA sequences cannot be patented, the medicine or drug formulation on curing based on the related research can apply for a patent because it is an “invention”.

In “Patenting Life,” Michael Crichton argues that the government is mishandling the patenting office with the awarding of patents for human genes. Gene patenting is blocking the advancement of modern medicine and could be costing many patients their lives. The hold on research results in the discovery of fewer cures for modern diseases.

Chapter 25 – 1976-1988 – This chapter details the history of patenting living organisms — 1980 Supreme Court ruling which declared that Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty could patent a bacterium genetically engineered to consume oil and to help clean up oil spills.

A patent is a legal document giving inventors the property right to their own invention. A patent didn’t always mean the rights to an invention though. A patent used to mean a special privilege or favor. It also could be used to acquire more land or obtain rights to explore a new land. Presently the patent is used only for the rights to your invention. Virginia Alexandrea from The United States Patent and Trademark Office wrote the article “General Information Concerning Patents” where she described what Patent rights include.

I really enjoyed your post as I did not know it was possible to patent a gene. I really liked the examples you gave as it helped me understand what it means for a gene to be patent and what it affects it can have on the patient and their family. I believe this is something that should not be legal as if someone else can find a cure for diseases instead of the organization who owns it they should be allowed to do so.

Calfee on the other hand explains the opposite view from Crichton. Calfee thinks that human genes are able to be patented without relying on nature. “You have to isolate and purify the gene segment in a way that does not occur in nature, and you have to establish some sort of concrete use”utility”is the standard word to satisfy PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) standards.” (444). Which is a good explanation on how they would be able to patent another gene. Along with that, Calfee goes into giving more information using a scenario about what is something called “patent thicket”. “In which research is hemmed in by the possibility of bumping into all sorts of patents, such as those the researcher never knew existed.”

Myriad Genetics is a biotech company that has a patent on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which exist in all humans. I have no problem with that. Myriad Genetics has done what they reasonably had to in order to compete with other companies. Companies should be able to hold patents on genes because it will fuel the growth of scientific research.

What if a company could privately own something that naturally occurred in a body. Not some foreign object put into someone, but something that's part of their DNA. Now what if they had a deadly disease and were not allowed to donate their tissue for research because a company owned that specific disease gene. A Harvard graduate, Michael Crichton, who wrote “Patenting Life” and American Enterprise Institute scholar, John E. Calfee, who wrote “Decoding The Use Of Gene Patents”, argue the pros and cons of gene patenting. Crichton and Calfee disagree on the major key points on gene patenting.

Competition amongst researchers intensified and instead of collaborating with each other, they kept their research restricted, in hopes of striking it rich someday. As an example, there are currently 4,875 U.S. patents for Lyme disease in comparison to 808 for Parkinson’s disease, or 2,148 for Alzheimer 's disease. (Due to the similarity in symptoms, and the unknown cause of both Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease, some believe it is really just Lyme disease.) Nevertheless, with all the interest in a “hard to catch and easy to cure” disease like Lyme, the number of patents cannot be ignored; patents equal money.

Base on this week’s reading, the biotechnology researches are need to be protected by patent because of the high cost. Like other patented pharmaceutical medicine, Patent will encourage researchers to develop gene based products, make more specify, more human tolerated medicine and make more diseases

When thinking about patents, many of us wonder how anyone can patent genes that all of us have carried since we were born. U.S patent law allows inventors to claim new and useful machines, processes, and objects as proprietary creations. This privilege, however, has not been extended to naturally occurring phenomena, such as elements in the periodic table. However, a legal precedent now allows human genes to be patented. In order to study genes, scientists have to isolate and manipulate genes in the laboratory. Thus, in the eyes of patent law, genes are treated just as any other man-made chemical ( Regalado 50). On the strength of this logic, the U.S Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has been issuing patents to genetic discoveries since the 1970s. Human growth-hormone, insulin, erythropoietin-protein drugs with billions of dollars in combined sales are all manufactured using patented DNA sequences.

This study helps us to understand what we need to know about companies owning specific portions of DNA sequences that exist in our own human bodies.

The advancement of technology has lead to many scientists conducting more experiments with gene modification. This has lead to scientists to isolate certain genes that may cause a certain disease, thus modified genes may change the organism in a particular way. It may help farmers with crop cultivation and reduce crop infestation. It may also help farmers to be able to cultivated crops or keep animals that are prawn to drought resistance. Before, I go in details explain the importance of why businesses that develop modified organisms should be able to preserve their property rights by patenting such organisms or why such organism should not be patentable. I would like to briefly explain the history of patenting. For over two hundred years living organisms have been excluded from patent laws; life forms were considered a “product of nature” and not a human invention. “The non-patentable status of living organisms changed with the 1980 landmark Supreme Court case Diamond v. Chakrabarty,” (W3 Unisa, 2005). The court decided in a narrow 5-4 decision that a strain of bacteria that had been modified by the insertion of new genes was patentable because it was not naturally occurring. The foreign genes gave the bacteria the ability to break down hydrocarbons, and its “inventors” hoped it might be useful for cleaning up oil spills. Historically, patents were initially developed to insure and protect inventors and to make sure that they could benefit

Techniques, like “[plant] cell culture, recombinant DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] technology and cellular cloning, [would] now provide us with new ways to tap into natural diversity”(Seidler para. 3). To put it another way, biotechnology could provide new medicines. New medicines could eliminate side effect and eradicate repeated visit for injection in treatment for diseases or cancer(Christopher para. 4). Therefore, limiting biotechnology would hinder the process of creating new medicine. Medine would not be the only one affected in the medical field, but in addition, diseases could be

That same year, congress also amended patent regulations to allow the commercialization of products developed through government-sponsored research (Skloot 210). Patents slow medical advancements because it makes tissue more about ‘ownership’ than progress. ‘Tissue profiteering’ has replaced the greater good. A 2005 study published in Science estimated that some twenty percent of all human genes had already been patented and of those, sixty-three percent were by private firms (Darnovsky, Reynolds). Despite being encouraged by the biotechnology industry, researchers are at risk of violating patent laws because U.S. patent applications remain confidential for the first eighteen months after filing (Darnovsky, Reynolds). One notion is to give property rights to people so they ‘own’ their tissues, and therefore uninvited removal of such tissue by a third party would be considered trespassing or theft (Charo). However, universities claim that property rights in removed tissues would complicate the research process by reducing their ability to use stored tissues effectively (Charo).