Thanks for the article, Elisabeth. The levels of skulduggery and legal wrangling over 25 years are too labyrinthine to follow, and seem to have been presented for the purpose of allowing twenty-five years to pass. Nevertheless, a consensus seems to have emerged. An entity can't just describe a sequence and claim patent protections on all the uses; not even if one is the famous Haseltine, however many episodes he filmed on Baywatch. Not even if the other entity is the Re(a)gents of the University of California.
As events evolved, Genentech's success lead to UC's success, and vice versa. For the future, whether such a consensus is accepted in India and China, and other countries, will be important. Can you imagine Dr. Reddy vs. Wikipedia, adjudicated in Beijing?
Dr. Rimmer did mention Decode, and their issues seem less resolved, at least to me. |
