Thinking Shouldn't Be Illegal - JSQ
Thinking Shouldn't Be Illegal:
I'm a little surprised to find myself in wholehearted agreement
with Michael Crichton, after what I wrote about
his essay about alarmism.
But his recent New York Times op-ed
says something clear, simple, and important:
Actually, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented
that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact
public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can
be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient's test results
and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal
circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.
This Essay Breaks the Law
by Michael Crichton,
The New York Times,
OP-ED Section,
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Maybe this will convey to more people that
Software Patent Reform
and patent reform in general is needed.
One reason proponents of software patent reform don't get very far
is that big pharma likes patents broken just the way they are,
so that they can own profitable things such as parts of the human genome.
As Crichton says:
Do you want to be told by your doctor, "Oh, nobody studies your disease
any more because the owner of the gene/enzyme/correlation has made it
too expensive to do research?"
The question of whether basic truths of nature can be owned ought not
to be confused with concerns about how we pay for biotech development,
whether we will have drugs in the future, and so on. If you invent a new
test, you may patent it and sell it for as much as you can, if that's your
goal. Companies can certainly own a test they have invented. But they
should not own the disease itself, or the gene that causes the disease,
or essential underlying facts about the disease. The distinction is
not difficult, even though patent lawyers attempt to blur it. And even
if correlation patents have been granted, the overwhelming majority of
medical correlations, including those listed above, are not owned. And
shouldn't be.
I like patents.
But I think there are serious problems with the current patent process,
and I think Crichton is doing us all a favor by sounding the alarm.
-jsq