One of my favourite characters on the cartoon Wacky Races was Professor Pat Pending and his convert-a-car, which could transform into many kinds of vehicle and had a wide arrange of amazing speed-enhancing gizmos.
But these days there’s another group of professors who are not impressed by what patents – pending or otherwise - are doing for innovation. They say private companies are acting more like the sneaky Dick Dastardly by patenting conceptual matters such as human genes and then blocking others from performing any research or testing of “their” genes.
In a letter (link) to the Times this week, two Nobel prize-winning professors say that the patent system originally designed to protect and encourage innovation is now being “manipulated by industry to thwart rivals, block research or to direct it away from humanitarian goals towards those that maximise profits”.
One example they cite is that of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, where they allege that research has been stymied because of patents held by a US company.
And its not only research that’s affected – Australian cancer experts are this week warning that genetic tests for the BRCA1 and 2 genes will become "vastly more expensive" after the Melbourne-based company Genetic Technologies announced it would start to enforce its exclusive rights over two genes here. Currently the $2,000 tests are funded through public hospitals but Cancer Council Australia chief executive Professor Ian Olver says the move will increase the price two or threefold as seen in some Canadian states.
"That may well mean that people who need that test won't be able to afford it, and if the state governments fund it, as they do now, that's more money spent that could go elsewhere," Prof Olver says.
At least we can look to the Nobel laureates, who are proposing new protocols to cover commercial monopolies over genetic information. In their Manchester Manifesto they suggest a new model for open access to scientific data and research.
As genetic information and becomes more prominent in medicine, we need to have clear rules about who controls what.
