Doctors Fight Patent On Medical Knowledge 205
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Doctor's groups, including the AMA and too many others to list, are supporting the Mayo Clinic in the case Prometheus v. Mayo. The Mayo Clinic alleges that the patents in question merely recite a natural phenomenon: the simple fact that the level of metabolites of a drug in a person's body can tell you how a patient is responding to that drug. The particular metabolites in this case are those of thiopurine drugs and the tests are covered by Prometheus Lab's 6,355,623 and 6,680,302 patents. But these aren't the only 'observational' patents in medicine — they're part of a trend where patents are sought to cover any test using the fact that gene XYZ is an indicator for some disease, or that certain chemicals in a blood sample indicate something about a patient's condition. There are even allegations that certain labs have gone so far as to send blood samples to a university lab, order testing for patented indicators, then sue that university for infringement. Naturally, Prometheus Labs sees this whole story differently, arguing that the Mayo Clinic will profit from treating patients with knowledge patented by them. They have their own supporters, too, such as the American Intellectual Property Law Association." Prometheus doesn't seem to be a classic patent troll; they actually perform the tests for which they have obtained patents.
Re:What's next? (Score:1, Interesting)
Pretty close...
Chicken soup mix composition and a process for preparing the same [uspto.gov]
Abstract
Preparation of dehydrated chicken soup mix involves pressure cooking of chicken meat along with ginger, garlic and onion, separation of liquid extract from cooked meat, separation of meat from the bone, blending of cooked meat and extract with starch and spices into a mix, addition of liquid extract to the mix to make it a slurry, drying of slurry into powder form, and mixing of this powder with milk powder, salt, monosodium glutamate (MSG), ascorbic acid, pepper powder and sugar and packed. The product is sensorily highly acceptable and is microbiologically safe.
I know I may be a bit of a leftist on this but (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Test for Money or No Test at All? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the way it's supposed to work, but how it's more likely to work is:
1) Another clever person takes your idea, and uses it to make a better/faster/cheaper test
2) You hire lawyers to take the clever person to court, and tie up their product in so much litigation it looks like the world's largest ball of twine.
3) You either end up buying out the clever person, litigate them into bankruptcy, or delay them until you've extended the patent and your extended patent expires.
4) You then make a minor change to the process, repatent the idea, and repeat the process from step one.
Re:Beaten to the punch (Score:4, Interesting)
Prometheus is the Titan who was chained to a rock by Zeus so an eagle could eat his liver every day (it grew back every night).
Since the liver filters crap from the blood, clearly Prometheus has the patent on regenerative shit filtering, not on shit production.
As a side note, what's ironic to me is Prometheus has become a symbol of defiance to authority, largely due to Shelley's Prometheus Unbound [wikipedia.org]. (In the original mythology, Prometheus reconciles with Zeus and submits to Zeus's will -- Shelley rewrites the myth so that Prometheus's defiance leads to Zeus's downfall). So now we have a company using the name "Prometheus", but using the full powers of authority to prevent others from using potentially life-saving technology.
Way, way off-topic -- I know. But for this company to use the name "Prometheus" because of its association with knowledge/wisdom (Prometheus brought fire to humans, which is why Zeus punished him), but then contradict the modern association with defiance of authority... well, I find it humorous, anyway.
Re:Chicken Little (Score:5, Interesting)
So where does that leave me?
I'm the director of an analytical chemistry facility located at a university. We perform exactly the kinds of analysis described in the patents routinely (though not directly from blood, for various reasons). At the moment we're trying to set up a partnership with another (larger) university that has a medical school and hospital. Strangely enough, they don't have an analytical lab like the one I head, so we hope to work with them performing such analyses.
Will we be protected, as "outside contractors"? Will I need to search the patent literature every time someone submits a sample, or if I need to develop a new analysis protocol?
I briefly read through the patents, and they are absolutely disgusting. They look like scientific or medical review texts, without even a hint of new methods or protocols that could be (maybe, barely) defensible as patentable. This is an outright claim on knowledge itself.
Re:Test for Money or No Test at All? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, the research surrounding statistical analysis of correlation between diseases and body diagnostics will surely skyrocket as people race to patent these things.
Speaking as someone who does this kind of research for a living, I can tell you that patentability is neither necessary nor desirable to spur research in the field.
Re:Test for Money or No Test at All? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, the research surrounding statistical analysis of correlation between diseases and body diagnostics will surely skyrocket as people race to patent these things.
Speaking as someone who does this kind of research for a living, I can tell you that patentability is neither necessary nor desirable to spur research in the field.
Well maybe you should talk to the venture capital funds and the people who give you researchers money to do research that might result in nothing. Or do you work for free?
We're all quiet about drug patents when a company does something really beneficial for humanity [slashdot.org] and patents it. No one got upset with Cleveland Biomedical Labs for patenting those radiation fixing proteins--you'll notice their investors enjoyed a temporary 30% increase in stock worth that has since diminished. But when it comes to harvesting the money off said patents, they'll be monsters. Do we see this amount of research in other countries that don't honor patents? How are their researchers compensated? They feel good inside?
I'm all for patent reform and believe many medical patents are out of control, I'm just interested in how you see this model working if you are one of the researchers that needs compensation.
Very good argument for socializing this research (Score:4, Interesting)
I couldn't have put it better than you just did. We, as a society find it useful to pursue this research, but no company can monetize it without patenting patently un-patentable procedures, so we should socialize the costs of the research. Thankfully, when the free market fails us, we do have other options besides letting some unscrupulous and selfish idiots bend us over a barrel.
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since when is the name of a law required to have anything to do with the content of the law?
I agree, but courts aren't always so reasonable... (Score:1, Interesting)
> If you invent a test for a certain metabolite and I make another test for the same thing that works in another way, how have I infringed?
Well, Prometheus Labs seems to think that the Mayo Clinic has infringed, even though the Mayo clinic came up with their own test for the same drug metabolites.
That's why I wrote in the summary that they're trying to patent the knowledge itself, even though the actual arguments in court are over the fine points of patent law. They're arguing over whether or not you can have a patent on a procedure when there's no "post solution activity." I.E. the patent covers the activity of diagnosing how much of the drug the patient needs.
Now, I'm sure there are decent patent lawyers who will opine that this state of affairs is absurd and that this shouldn't be patentable in the first place, but at least one court has agreed with Prometheus Labs, which is what makes this more newsworthy than just another absurd patent application that hasn't even been granted.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property [eff.org]