One thing Celera has done that is absolutely stupid is change its story about its intentions, which makes public statements less than credible. As an example, here is an article from the Washington Post. The article describes how Celera misled Congress, by stating that it intended to file 100 to 300 patents on bits of the human gene sequence, while filing literally thousands. Venter said that the info would be put onto a DVD and "given" to any researcher who wants it, when in fact the company intends to charge thousands. There's nothing wrong with making a buck, obviously, otherwise there's no point in investing, but there's a big difference between patenting inventions (ok) and patenting things that occur in nature (not ok).
>>Md. Gene Researcher Draws Fire On Filings
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 1999; Page E01
A maverick gene researcher who told Congress last year that he expected
to receive patents on "100 to 300" bits of human genetic material has filed
preliminary applications on about 6,500 such gene sequences in the space of
a month.
J. Craig Venter, the Rockville scientist who has been a lightning rod for
criticism since he announced plans to unravel all human genes as a
commercial venture, is drawing fresh controversy with the announcement.
But he said his plans have not really changed and his critics don't
understand U.S. patent law.
Celera Genomics Corp., Venter's Rockville company, says it has unraveled
about a third of the human body's genetic instructions in one month and
expects to publish a full gene map next year, five years before the original
deadline set by the federal government. Mapping the genetic code promises
to open up new possibilities for understanding and treating such ailments as
cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. The potential profit and glory have
set off intensive jockeying among researchers.
To Celera's many critics, including academic researchers locked in a race
with Venter to be first to publish a gene map, the disclosure that the
company has already filed 6,500 patent applications comes as proof of their
longstanding argument that Venter is out to profiteer at the expense of
public welfare.
"I think it's going to inhibit work on these genes," said Robert Waterston,
director of a gene-sequencing center at Washington University. "I worry
that both companies and people will not invest their time and effort into
something if they think that things are tied up."
In sworn testimony before Congress last year, Venter said he expected to
obtain no more than 100 to 300 genetic patents, and then only after careful
study of their potential usefulness as treatments. He said he would put most
of his data in the public domain for free, making it difficult for any
researcher to stake out big patent claims on the human genetic code. "Our
actions will make the human genome unpatentable," Venter said then.
The issue of gene patents has long been controversial. A clear body of law
has developed in the United States and other Western countries that genes
can be patented, but many academic researchers feel nonetheless that a
sort of gold rush is underway to stake out excessively broad claims based
on thin research. These critics fear that such broad, sloppy patents will slow
medical progress.
"It puts us in a situation where there is such a tangled meshwork of patents
and licenses that downstream research is actually inhibited," said Francis
Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which
is competing with Venter. "A situation where somebody with a good idea is
actually prohibited from pursuing it is not the way the public will benefit."
Some academic researchers have been excoriating Venter over the past
two days after his patent statistics were reported in the Los Angeles Times
and several British newspapers. They are accusing him of promising
Congress one thing and doing another. But Venter said yesterday that his
critics were misreading his intentions.
The patent applications filed to date are "provisional" applications that
establish the date of a discovery, Venter said. Such applications, permitted
by U.S. law since 1995, can be filed cheaply and give a company one year
to file a full patent application, which is more detailed and more expensive.
The company's commercial interests are protected during that year.
Many companies--particularly in fast-moving, competitive industries such as
biotechnology--file provisional patents as soon as they believe they've found
something useful, then spend the next year deciding whether the application
is really worth pursuing. Many of these applications are subsequently
abandoned, though few companies will disclose exact numbers on how
many they abandon. Executives of these companies see the provisional
applications as an essential competitive strategy--if they don't file first, they
reason, somebody else will.
"Everybody all over the world is working on the same thing," said Kenneth
J. Burchfiel, a top patent lawyer in Washington who has no involvement
with Celera or Venter. "Whoever plants that stake first potentially is going
to get a patent on that [gene] sequence."
Celera expects to keep filing provisional patent applications, possibly totaling
20,000 or 30,000 by the time all genes are mapped. But Venter said a great
many of those applications will be abandoned as it becomes clear the gene
sequences specified in them are not medically useful. When he's through,
Venter said, he expects Celera to have roughly the number of patents he
told Congress he would have--a few hundred, not several thousand.
"There's a lot of people out there that want to make hay about anything
we're doing," Venter said. "It's scare-mongering, and it's doing harm to the
American public's ability to understand this complex field."
One thing is clear: As fast as Celera may be moving, other companies are
far ahead of it in filing patents on genetic information. One of them is
Human Genome Sciences Inc. of Rockville, with which Venter was once
associated. That company, using a different research method than Celera's,
has filed patent applications far more detailed than Venter's on about 6,750
human genes that it believes to be medically useful.
Venter said he had no ultimate control over how many gene patents will
spring from Celera's research because big drug companies can subscribe to
the company's database, use it to make their own discoveries and then file
their own patent applications.
Venter added, however, that he remained committed to handing out the
complete human genetic sequence without charge by sometime next year.
He said the gene map would be put on a high-capacity computer disk,
known as a DVD, and given to any researcher who wants it.<< |
