Register Log in

Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

The decline of gene patents

Michael Crichton takes to the pages of the NYT to decry gene patents, but the …

It is becoming a truism that if there are two sides to a scientific debate, Michael Crichton can usually be found on the wrong one. Whether it be germ theory or climate change, the fact that he's written some books endows him with a misplaced sense of authority to pontificate on science. His latest oeuvre, an article in the New York Times, is no different.

The subject of DNA patents can be an emotional one. The idea that a bunch of eggheads can do some sequencing and be granted a patent on a DNA code that you and your ancestors have been walking around with for generations doesn't sit right with a lot of people. Why should a biotech be able to profit from something we all carry around with us?

As ever, the story isn't nearly so simple. Consider other biological products that have been patented. Erythropoietin might be naturally occuring, but it doesn't naturally occur in nice little glass vials containing 100 mg of purified EPO ready for injection. For working out how to get to that end product in a reproducible manner, Amgen were awarded a patent. The same holds true for DNA patents. Patents must be novel, but they also have to have utility; you can't simply pick genes at random out of the Human Genome Project and submit them to the USPTO.

It is true that the 1990s saw a boom in the filing and granting of gene patents in the US, but that trend has not been maintained, according to new research published in Nature Biotechnology. Michael Hopkins and colleagues from the University of Sussex have examined the numbers of gene patents filed with the USPTO and its European and Japanese counterparts, and the data tends to take the wind out of Crichton's sails. At first, DNA patents were harder to obtain in Europe and Japan, and the US is now catching up to this trend. Granted patents have been in steep decline since 2001, and applications are tailing off.

Hopkins suggests a number of reasons for the decreasing number of DNA patents, such as growing prior art, a perceived diminished commercial value and an increasing patentability bar. What used to fly with the USPTO in 1999 is no longer good enough in 2007. What's more, patents aren't the invincible barriers on research that critics make out. They can be challenged in court; Pfizer successfully challenged the University of Rochester's patent over the COX-2 gene to name but one example.

Although high profile examples like the BRCA2 breast cancer gene patent are often quoted by critics of gene patenting, the truth is that such examples are fewer and farther between than is commonly thought. At least 30 percent of gene patents granted in the 1990s are not being protected, and many more are cross-licensed with little hassle.

Sadly, such rational thinking on the subject doesn't make for good headlines, and won't help pseudoskeptic science fiction writers publicize their books.

Expand full story

You must to comment.

Need to register for a new account?

If you don't have an account yet it's free and easy.