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To: Gerald Walls who wrote (100951)	3/17/2000 2:12:00 AM
From: Dinesh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

OT Gerald, One question here I guess is between discoveries and inventions. Patent law specifically says that whatever occurs in nature is not patentable. E.g., properties of Silicon. Gene sequences are discoveries, not inventions. Why has the PTO been so blind to it so far ? One, not enough at stake in past. Two, if it could grant One-Click (Amazon) patent, they are obviously overworked. Three, universities woke up now to the position that they may need to license things they took for granted. The last one may be the real reason for all this brouhahua now. You mentioned national security as the rationale behind goverment funding of DARPANET. People's health should be granted similar priority. After all, the govt. funds a variety of other public good programs (e.g., Arts). There is no end to this issue, and I am not a lawyer. I merely wanted to respond to the opinion that "market driven" is always good. An analogy would be to hawk body organs on ebay. Or, to ask pre-payment before giving an Epidural. Regards Dinesh