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Patents Science

U.S. Gets Taste of Own Patent Medicine 76

Posted by Hemos from the the-rights-battle dept.
cheesedog writes "A few Andean countries have turned the tables on U.S. requests for more forceful expansion of patent law, requesting broader protection for indigenous plants and tribal uses of natural medicines. At first glance this seems like a win for these countries, but it is also a major braodening of the definition of what kinds of ideas can be locked away from the public in government-granted monopolies. As Right to Create notes: 'Let us hope that those involved in these negotiations, particularly those representing us in the U.S., see this for what it is: a de facto demonstration of how ridiculous our intellectual monopoly regime has become, and how insane our demands on the rest of the world's citizens are.'"
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U.S. Gets Taste of Own Patent Medicine More

U.S. Gets Taste of Own Patent Medicine

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  • 404 (Score:4, Informative)

    by spot35 ( 644375 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:31AM (#14081044)
    Nice, the linked article shows a 404. Here is another article [ip-watch.org] about the subject

  • Let's hope for a pony while we're at it... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by general_re ( 8883 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:51AM (#14081138) Homepage
    The odds of this sort of IP protection being accepted worldwide: about zero. Anyone feel like sending a royalty payment to Peru each time you eat a potato? Didn't think so.

    Similarly, the odds of this causing some sort of moral crisis on the part of US and other Western governments: about zero. Like I said, let's wish for a pony while we're enjoying this rich, satisfying fantasy life.

    • So, you (i.e. US) pretend to receive royalties payments and have exclusive rights on something which has been used by indigenous people by years (probably decades or even more)?
      Its funny as the US pretends respect from everyone without reciprocating.
      • No. Let's review what we're talking about here - basically, the idea is that countries should somehow have rights to anything and everything that's created from something that once upon a time kinda sorta originated somewhere in the vicinity of what would one day be their country - i.e., they don't want to patent the cancer cure, they want to patent the tree it comes from, and thereby claim ownership of the cancer cure too. It's great if you're the sort of country that has a lot of trees but doesn't actua
        • So, suddenly because someone send a researcher to the rain forest, to learn how indigenous people used some plants, they suddenly have exclusives right to the product of those plants, and you pretend that even them (i.e. the people that have used the plants forever) have to pay royalties? Its kind of odd, dont you think? If anyone has any rights to the medicinal application of the plant species, is the ones that have been using them for a long time, not the US that puts them into a plastic bottle and patten
          • So, suddenly because someone send a researcher to the rain forest, to learn how indigenous people used some plants, they suddenly have exclusives right to the product of those plants, and you pretend that even them (i.e. the people that have used the plants forever) have to pay royalties?

            Any actual examples of that ever happening? Bayer held a patent on aspirin when it was first created, but that did not prevent anyone who was so inclined from going out and eating the bark of the willow tree from whence

            • Part of what the US is trying to force in most if not all of the *FTA partners, is for them to agree to your disfunctional patent system and IP protection.
              • That's not what I asked. For a while, under this very patent system you object to, Bristol-Myers held a couple of patents on Taxol, before they were eventually invalidated. But even while they were still in force, that didn't stop anyone who wanted from going out and eating the bark of the Pacific Yew, or making the leaves into tea, or whatever folk remedy you care to think of. Object if you want, but at least try to ground objections in reality.
                • My objections are not about the people drinking or smoking whatever herbs they want to, that wont change. They are about stealing knowledge from other cultures/sources and pretending to discover the wheel, and pretend to have some kind of special rights to exploit it over anyone else's.
                  • They are about stealing knowledge from other cultures/sources and pretending to discover the wheel...

                    If I observe you, a native tribesman, using some herb to cure toothaches, and I then extract and patent some new painkiller from the herb, how is that "stealing" knowledge from you?

                    ...pretend[ing] to have some kind of special rights to exploit it over anyone else's.

                    Ah, but don't you see? That's exactly what these countries are claiming for themselves. They're claiming that, because the potato came fr

                    • I think the point is that they're both villains. Just because someone knows to chew some indigenous bark or eat a potato to cure some ill doesn't mean they should get some rights to the cures created from knowledge they already had - something tells me that knowledge is kind of old. But the issue is whether or not some company that comes in and extracts the compound and either synthesizes it or has an efficient means of extraction should be able to patent the compound itself either. And the answer is no,

                    • If I observe you, a native tribesman, using some herb to cure toothaches, and I then extract and patent some new painkiller from the herb, how is that "stealing" knowledge from you?

                      You contradict yourself. If I, native tribesman, am using some herb as a painkiller, and you, chemist, examine the herb and find Compound X in it, and patent it, Compound X is not a new painkiller! I, native tribesman, was using Compound X before you came along.

                      If you take Compound X and add a hydroxyl group and a benzene r

                    • Yeah, but you can't just send a bundle of leaves to the pharmacy and let doctors know your miracle is now available. It takes time and money to find the miracle compound - assuming it exists, and it may be that you end up wasting that time and money to find nothing - it takes time and money to synthesize it, it takes time and money to test it for safety and efficacy, it takes time and money to mass-produce it and get it into the hands of sick people. Plus, you have to cover all the time and money you spen
                    • I thought I posted a reply, but the Gods of the Ether apparently swallowed it :)

                      Anyway, what you seem to be getting at is that everyone who's ever sold or grown a potato should be writing a check to Peru.

                      And if not, what's the answer? How do you reward the natives for somehow discovering that people who chew the unripe berries of the Ixtaplopchtl bush never get the sniffles, while simultaneously not creating a disincentive for someone to turn the Ixtaplopchtl berry into a useful medicine?

                    • "And the answer is no, no one should have a patent on the compound, not peru or the company. "

                      Right and you think someone is just going to spend 50-100 million dollars to put out the next drug without any kind of patent protection?

                      Look people we all agree that software patents are bad, but patents to have a place and a purpose. The drug industry would not exist without them. It takes a lot of serious technology to discover, scale up, and bring to market a new drug. This is not something a 16 kid will be

                    • Look people we all agree that software patents are bad, but patents to have a place and a purpose. The drug industry would not exist without them.

                      Nobody's arguing that the current drug industry relies upon patents. That's a given. But does it have to be that way? Software patents may be one of the more ridiculous implementations of Intellectual Property, but drug patents are arguably the ones that most detrimentally affect human life (Yes, people with AIDS in Africa count too.)

                      Right and you think s

                  • My objections are not about the people drinking or smoking whatever herbs they want to, that wont change. They are about stealing knowledge from other cultures/sources and pretending to discover the wheel, and pretend to have some kind of special rights to exploit it over anyone else's.
                    "Stealing knowledge"? How do you do that, exactly? Is that like copying a file?

          • So, suddenly because someone send a researcher to the rain forest, to learn how indigenous people used some plants, they suddenly have exclusives right to the product of those plants

            The flip side of that is the indigenous people made no effort to help anyone else with their knowledge. It took someone else a lot of effort to go find that knowledge and bring it to people who need it. They also likely did not recognise it for what it was.

            Medicine is something that takes a lot of up front investment, a lot of

            • So, that lab has exclusive rights to the use of the product of those plants, just because it wanted to do a business, instead of the people that discovered and has been using the plant? Lets be fair, the lab didn't want to help anyone with their knowledge except themselves and their shareholders. TFA was about the other side wanting equivalent protection as the one the US requires.Basically, a tit for tat. Actually, all the US wants, as usual, is to force their interests on the rest of the world. They dont
              • Lets be fair, the lab didn't want to help anyone with their knowledge except themselves and their shareholders.

                Yeah, they get helped, and all the people who receive the medicine they create get helped, considering that they wouldn't have had it otherwise. Drug companies make money for themselves and their shareholders because they make things people want to buy - i.e., by helping sick people get well.

              • Lets be fair, the lab didn't want to help anyone with their knowledge except themselves and their shareholders. TFA was about the other side wanting equivalent protection as the one the US requires.Basically, a tit for tat.

                This has nothing to do with equivalent protection. Equivalent would be filing patents on traditional knowledge and trying to make money from them until they expire. There is nothing in US or any other patent law (you guys realize that other companies have patents and that most big pharma

                • (The value of natural compounds is wildly exaggerated because 1) it's a romantic idea and 2) it's a useful carrot with which to encourage poor countries to preserve their forests. If the price gets too high, pharmas will simply ignore natural products and rely entirely on their chemists.)

                  Option 3) The pharmaceuticals start growing the plants on their own in other countries without paying anything to the country the plant came from.

                  Or are the countries trying to claim a patent on the platns/animals that
                  • Option 3) The pharmaceuticals start growing the plants on their own in other countries without paying anything to the country the plant came from.

                    That's basically what they do now. But that doesn't allow certain parties to get a slice of the pie, which is why...

                    Or are the countries trying to claim a patent on the platns/animals that came about naturally?

                    ...these countries are trying to do more or less exactly that. Basically, the assertion is that they have some sort of collective ownership rights

                    • The other thing is that they'd like to claim that there's some sort of ownership rights inherent in the techniques employed by natives around the world, such that if you learn something useful from them and their folk remedies, you should have to pay for it.

                      My point is that these claims, which have no time limit and require no new effort on the part of the claimholder, are entirely unlike patents as they exist anywhere in the world. (They do, though, resemble how many of the anti-IP loudmouths think paten

                    • A good point. Where does it end, insofar as it's basically a zero-investment "forever" patent?

                      The other thing that occurs to me is that there's been so much cultural cross-pollination (literally and figuratively) throughout history, that it looks like it's damn near impossible for anyone to avoid getting tangled in it. Aside from potatoes, corn is a staple part of the Peruvian diet, both for human and livestock consumption. Uh-oh, that's trouble - corn was domesticated, as nearly as anyone can tell, in

                  • Kind of like patenting genetic sequences?
                    • Trust me, I don't like that either.
                    • If American companies can patent genes which they "discover" then why shouldn't Peru defend it's citizens rights to patent medicinal plants they discovered? They're both silly, but equally silly. If the US wants to pressure other countries into silly laws then why shouldn't the rest of the world engage in some silliness right back?
                    • How's this (somewhat) logical reason then? Prior Art. The knowledge has existed for thousands of years. They didn't just figure out what it was for, it's been known for a long time. At least with genes, they are recently figuring out what does what.
                    • But who is responsible for the prior art? The indiginous peoples, the same ones who would (supposedly) benefit from the patent. So in the case of a prior art argument, nobody should be allowed to patent these things. And the drug companies aren't patenting the process for purifying the active ingredients... they're patenting the compound -- the same one that has prior art.

                      If you read the article, the South Americans aren't asking for patents, just "minor protections" such as being informed that something
              • So, that lab has exclusive rights to the use of the product of those plants

                No, nothing stops the indigenous people from using the same traditional medicine they always have. The lab has rights on a product derived from that one, yes, but not from the plant itself.
              • "Lets be fair, the lab didn't want to help anyone with their knowledge except themselves and their shareholders."

                As someone who works in the Drug Industry as a computational chemist I take quite a bit of offense to your statment.
                Quite a lot of us care about the patients. In fact at our last in house conference Paul Anderson (ex American Chemical Society President) gave a talk titled: Patients first Profits second. We do care. Perhaps you don't care about your job but most of us in this field do care abo
                • Sorry if you feel insulted, but perhaps its time that you USians start to look into the mirror and ask yourself why does most of the world think that way about you. About health and the drug industry, its been shown that most of the time (if not all) the drugs companies dont care much about anything BUT profits, and that's the reason why many 3rd word countries decided to give the finger to the patents and start manufacturing their own versions of the drugs.
          • mostly because people can patent even a Turd shape over there
            Actually, the turd would probably fall under copyright. The method for shaping said turd would be patentable though. Not that I disagree with you at all. I agree. The idea that the turd would fall under a "seperate set" of laws illustrates how convoluted the laws have become.
  • U.S. Gets Taste of Own Patent Medicine

    Please make the bad puns go away! They hurt...

  • what is this "braodening" (Score:3, Funny)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:56AM (#14081162) Journal
    what is this "braodening" of which you speak ?

  • An idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by alexwcovington ( 855979 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:03AM (#14081197) Journal
    Well, if you can patent genes and lifeforms... Why not just patent Gene Simmons?

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:04AM (#14081201)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • indeed (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Ender Ryan ( 79406 )
      Indeed, we are a country of hypocritical nitwits and warmongers. If you think the government is being altruistic when it sends thousands of barely-adults to far off lands to kill and die, just look at the rest of our foreign policy to see just how altruistic "we" are.

      Just what the fuck do we even do to better humanity anymore? We bring absolutely nothing to the table anymore. Our largest export these days is violence and ridiculous law and trade practices. Even as an American myself, I can see that th

      • see sig below. end of transmission.

      • Re:indeed (Score:3, Insightful)

        by iggymanz ( 596061 )
        nothing to the table? What would the middle east or China be like, where would they be, without western money? Better yet, where will the arab lands be when the world moves on to alternate energy sources. Answer: They will be primative shit holes (or more accurately. even more primative shitholes), with their minds and bodies imprisoned.. At least those in Iraq have a chance to build a better government for themselves (compared to dictatorship they had). You also seem to think that those who choose to
        • I'm sure people in Iraq is really happy that you are occupping their country, torturing their citizens, killing their civillians, using chemical weapons on their cities, detaining people in secret jails without giving them close to human treatment, etc.
          • Some are, some aren't. Those whom Saddam took good care of certainly aren't happy, and those who would like the entire middle east to revert to the seventh century aren't. But this is a temporary situation, just today the government there asked for a timetable for the U.S. to leave, which is good, they want to take things into their own hands.
        • You're an ignorant piece of shit. The people of Iraq are not being given any sort of opportunity with us there. They were a prosperous country under Saddam's oppressive rule during the 80s. In fact, "we" helped fucking put him there. We weren't even concerned when he attacked his neighbors; we only stepped in when the U.N. decided not to allow it.

          We fucking paid him to invade Iran. We turned a blind eye when he invaded Kuwait. Up to that time, most Iraqis had a very reasonable standard of living. S

          • "turned a blind eye"? No, that's when we went to war and kicked Saddam out of Kuwait. Was this before you were born so you're hazy on the details? The civil war continued under Saddam, with him butchering and gassing his own countrymen, another piece of history maybe you were in diapers for? I'm a cocky piece of shit, but not an ignorant one.
            • You're so wrong, moron. I was alive, and I do remember the controversy. Iraq was in Kuwait for 6 months before the U.S. decided to lift a fucking finger. Up till that time, we had supplied Saddam with money, weapons, and support.

              It's ignorant fuckers like you who have given our country one black eye after another. The world hates us, we produce nothing, our economy is based on fictional assets. Congratulations, we're perfectly fucked.

              • Get your dates right. Iraq invaded on August 2,1990. US and Kuwait forced the UN Security Council to meet and have a resolution passed demanding the withdraw of troops, this was within hours.
                On August 7 the US already had moved troops to the border(far from the 6 months before lifting a finger) On the 8th we had naval battle groups in place. By October the US had over 500,000 personnel in place.
      • Our largest export these days is violence and ridiculous law and trade practices.

        Judging by most of your comments, outrageous statements, inflammatory rhetoric, and gross obscenity are still some of our major exports.
        • Oh yeah? Eat shit. This is Slashdot, not some forum for sycophantic, quasi-intellectual masturbation. K5 is a great place for that crap.

          • Oh yeah? Eat shit.

            You're right, your posts do not contain outrageous statements, inflammatory rhetoric, or gross obscenity. I was mistaken.
            • *sigh*

              My point was that I really don't care how inflammatory my statements are. If it offends you, well, tough.

              But I have to disagree with you on two counts; my statements are neither outrageous nor do they contain gross obscenity. IMO, many of my statements are mildly vulgar to quite vulgar, but quite short of grossly obscene. That is, however, a matter of opinion. IMO, you're a fucking prude. And a statement cannot be outrageous if it is true, or at least a significant percentage of the populatio

    • "Seriously, you think that the US is going to have a moral change of heart when we are the same people who for years placed our national seaboarder miles out into the atlantic and contested anyone who got inside of it while at the same time following the 3 mile rule for every other country despite protests from those companys.

      The US could give two shits sadly."

      The U.S. stops and searches pretty much anyone it pleases in international waters, and not just within whatever limits it happens to set for its' own
    • >The US could give two shits sadly.

      Could *not* give... surely?

      But yeah, it's not about principles, it's about money. If the US government (and those who gain from it's policies) is making money from something, then that's fine. If not, then they want their cut. So patents will be left alone while the system "works" (makes money for them), and when it "doesn't work" (causes them to lose money, or not make as much) then it needs "fixing". The principle is the same as that applied to governments accused of
    • You do know that pretty much every country does the same thing, advocating one set of limits for itself while following another for everyone else, generally resorting to narrow, sometimes hypocritical definitions, depending on their own interests?

      Please look at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/field s/2070.html [cia.gov] and let me know how many of the open, standing disputes between states have to do with maritime limits? Or maybe http://www.oceanlaw.net/netpath/page8-mb2.htm [oceanlaw.net] ?

      Not to interrupt your litt
    • How on earth did a reference to maritime law warrant an "insightful" mod? Particularly an incorrect reference? The 1994 Law of the Sea secures territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, not three. There is an additional cause to allow an area of influence of an additional 12 nautical miles, for law/customs/immigration enforcement.

      Screw you, moderator scum!

  • They don't have the $$$ to make this stick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by max born ( 739948 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:37AM (#14081377)
    I wish them the best of luck but unforntunately the purpose of the patent laws seems to be, not to promote the progress of science but to concentrate wealth. The drug companies, et el, have paid millions of dollars [opensecrets.org] to congress to buy a system that keeps them in power. Sadly Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru don't have the kind of money it takes to control the situation in the long term.

  • It's all about health, right? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:42AM (#14081407) Homepage Journal
    Pharmaceutical companies only care about your health. Natural remedies are eeeevil and bad for you. Patented synthetic drugs made from extracts of those natural remedies are good. That which cannot be patented is bad! Don't you love the anti-herbal campaigns run by pharmaceutical companies, and now that there are medical studies which prove that at least some ages-old remedies actually work, they are now racing to patent them?

    Of course, if they can succeed in patenting things such as garlic, orange juice, cranberry juice, ecchinacea, and other foods which can cure some sicknesses that patented remedies can only control the symptoms of, and if they can patent herbs like St. John's Wort, Black cohosh, etc. then you will see pharmaceutical companies singing the praises of such things like revolutionary new cures for the cold, treatment of certain depressions for which prozac etc. are overkill, and black cohosh rather than conjugated horse urine for treatment of menopausal symptoms, all without negative side effects when taken in moderate amounts. You'll see herbal remedies and certain foods rise in prices and only be legally distributed by a certified/licenses pharmacist.

    Or perhaps I am just cynical. I'm sure they really do have the public good in mind, right? Right? I mean, certainly drugs which treat depression "but can cause heart failure certain individuals" or "can result in liver failure in certain individuals" and drugs which can control blood pressure "but side effects include glaucoma" is a good thing because they are patentable and real treatments of the cause of problems rather than controlling symptoms is bad for business.

    I'm all for patents for protecting legitimate inventions, but companies have gone too far with patents, and with the USPTO simply rubber-stamping every application to come through the door and leaving it up to the courts to sort out the mess, who wants to do business here in the US any more?

    What's up with patenting software? That is what copyright is for. You're fully protected, and you can trademark certain aspects of the look and feel of an app. Patents are not required. Besides, since the 1950s there has been plenty of prior art which should rule most software patents invalid anyhow. Heck, hypertext in its purest form has been around since analog computers, and prior to that in paper books.

    What's up with patenting the human genome? They innovated NOTHING. The human genome is either the product of billions of years of pure chance and accident, or the result of a design by "GOD" and there is nothing genetics companies are designing in the process, aside from designing the process and devices to actually map and manipulate the genome. Those processes and devices are certainly patentable, but the genome ought not to be as there is billions (or thousands, let's not get into that flame war, I'm including both theories here to avoid flamefests) of years' worth of prior art demonstrating that those companies have produced zilch.

    Am I veering off topic here? Not really, I'm just drawing some related (and unrelated) examples of how ridiculous the patent process has become, due in part to the employeee productivity quotas set at the USPTO, and due in part to laziness.

    A few years ago it was more difficult to obtain patent protection. A friend of mine invented a product related to automobiles and the USPTO rejected it because the clerk who received the application did not believe the invention would perform as claimed (since when is that the acid test for a patent?). The USPTO demanded that he produce other designs to prove that certain other things would not peform the intended function. He did so, persisted, and nearly $30K worth of prototypes later (not a lot of money for a large corp, but for a small self-funded proprietor it's a huge chunk of change) and independent testing labs proved his claim, they finally granted the patent. The clerk was certainly on his toes, but was a little too aggressive in enforcing the patent process, beca
    • Congrats! You win. I wish I could comment on your post, but I didn't actually read it. If I want a novel, I will go to Barnes and Noble.
    • I don't have the background or time to express an opinion on the main question posed by this article but I do have some comments on some statements you've made:

      I'm just drawing some related (and unrelated) examples of how ridiculous the patent process has become, due in part to the employeee productivity quotas set at the USPTO, and due in part to laziness.

      Yep, production requirements as well as all sorts of deadlines has been a chronic problem for over the last 30 years, and management has tightene

  • Sadly I don't expect the US to make any useful or moral decisions. That is unless a bunch of congressmen (and women) think they will be voted out of office over the issue!

  • Gold Mine! (Score:2, Funny)

    by corellon13 ( 922091 )
    I would love to be the country who can claim fire as its Intellectual Property! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, but it'll cost you should you use fire to light it.
  • "Spread YOUR cheeks!
  • Last year when I heard about this on NPR's "Science Friday", it was groups from the US that were leading the charge for this, not the countries' governments fighting back against oppressive american policies. I guess the media can spin any story how they like...
  • Regardless of what comes out, this shows why the US is going down hill:
    -too much greed (using patents to make $ from little or nothing)
    -too little research (fewer and fewer REAL things to patent)

    Now we are starting to see how patenting everything is ruining everything, even profits! (OMG! please save the $!)

    Through in the ID-vs-Darwin debate and the US become it should have been since GWB got in: a laughing stock.

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