2009 Nobel Ribosome Structures — Patented 168
tabascoj writes 'The announcement of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is the latest reminder that fundamental components of biology are being increasingly, and aggressively, patented. A commentary, from yalepatents.org, focuses on the research and subsequent patents, held by Yale and Thomas Steitz, one of this year's laureates.'
How is this ethical? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yes, it's an evil evil broken system.
Re:How is this ethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
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it's pretty obvious by now that well-regulated companies acting in their self-interest ultimately further mankind's goals.
Sure. Well regulated companies might. But there lies the flaw. If the regulations were working properly companies wouldn't be patenting the fruits of basic research nor stuff they just found in nature. These are not well regulated companies. And the fact that they have lobby groups the size of congress, with budgets to match, helps ensure the regulations stay broken.
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No capitalism doesn't work FOR humanity's best interests, however that doesn't mean their work doesn't further the advances of humanity.
Thinking of some of the greatest inventions of last century, the light-bulb or automobile. Both were made by great inventors, both drastically changed the world, both were made with profits in mind, and both had patents on their inventions.
Anyone who thinks that its wrong to make money for advanced research should get a clue on how the world works.
The same can be said for a
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It has nothing to do with motive, it has to do with effect. If it benefits mankind it qualifies. Who cares if the person profits from it at the same time? Would you begrudge someone recognition just because it profits them in some way?
That's a sure way to cut back on advancement several tens of years or more.
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It has nothing to do with motive, it has to do with effect. If it benefits mankind it qualifies. Who cares if the person profits from it at the same time? Would you begrudge someone recognition just because it profits them in some way?
That's a sure way to cut back on advancement several tens of years or more.
Many on here would. It reminds me of a saying: a capitalist and a socialist are walking down the street and a man drives past in his Ferrari. The capitalist says "I hope one day I have a Ferrari like him", the socialist says "I hope one day he has to walk like me".
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It has nothing to do with motive, it has to do with effect. If it benefits mankind it qualifies. Who cares if the person profits from it at the same time? Would you begrudge someone recognition just because it profits them in some way?
That's a sure way to cut back on advancement several tens of years or more.
Many on here would. It reminds me of a saying: a capitalist and a socialist are walking down the street and a man drives past in his Ferrari. The capitalist says "I hope one day I have a Ferrari like hi
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So a factory sitting idle (making zero profit) is how efficient? 100%? Infinity?
Re:How is this ethical? (Score:4, Insightful)
The question here is should you be able to patent the DNA itself? You didn't design it, in fact you had nothing whatsoever to do with its existence, you merely figured out how it worked - which took 20 years and millions of dollars. Obviously that effort should be rewarded, and just as obviously you can't possibly own a (very important) part of me, this not being ancient Greece or not-so-ancient USA.
Anyway, I don't think that Nobel prices should be given for patented work. After all, the whole point of the price is to reward improving humanity, but patents already supposedly do this.
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The question here is should you be able to patent the DNA itself?
That is not the question here, though. They've patented a method to analyze ribosomes, not the ribosomes themselves.
Anyway, I don't think that Nobel prices should be given for patented work.
So, if I go check out the thread on the physics prize ( http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/1427237/Father-of-Fiber-Optics-Wins-Nobel-Prize [slashdot.org] ) I should see this argument there too?
Anyway, everything is going to be patented now regardless. Due to how cu
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When a university or company say they want to be rewarded for the 20Million invested, that is often Public funds from the taxpayer... Who now must pay more for the next step of the work cus the methods to study it are now patented.
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Anyway, I don't think that Nobel prices should be given for patented work.
Um, winners of the prize in Literature don't all of the sudden have to turn their works over to the Public Domain. Why is this different?
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Even if it was funded with taxpayer money? Even if the patent prevents or significantly hinders companies and other universities from furthering the research?
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Don't worry about it... someone else already has patented it... you need to pay up or they will disconnect your DNA.
This is sick! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the world coming to?
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"I'm going to go down there & patent shit, then sue any sod that has a crap."
I'm sure I can dig up prior art.
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It's unethical, and unconstitutional.
Exactly why he's going to succeed.
I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you patent something that nature already patented itself millions of years ago? Hasn't the patent run out yet?!
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... cover not only the process for determining the structure of the molecules, but also the computation used to design new antibiotics.
You can not patent ideas or discoveries. But you can patent applications/machines. And if you live in a weird country, algorithms.
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It takes significant R&D to determine these structures and it seems that the patent office considers the discovery of a pre-existing biological component to be deserving of protection as much as a designed system for that very reason. It's indicative that we really should get around to reforming the patent system.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes even more to visit other planets. Should Mars become the patented intellectual property of the people running the Mars rover program?
The significant R&D is irrelevant to the patent process. A guy inventing things at his kitchen table with coat hanger wire is more eligible for a patent than someone who discovers the workings of nature.
We should reform the patent system.
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That's basically how the American West was explored: you take the risk of going there, if you survive, you own a piece of land. And ownership last forever, unlike patents that expire after 20 years.
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You know I think the nobel prize should only be given for things that are non-patentable, and have been opensourced.
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It takes even more to visit other planets. Should Mars become the patented intellectual property of the people running the Mars rover program?
Don't give the greedy fuckers any ideas!
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It's a tool made by our government.
In fact its a tool America copied off the British Government.
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the patent office
The US patent office. Mind you, if you're in a country that doesn't respect WTO/US patents, it doesn't matter.
Not Very Noble (Score:4, Informative)
Insert tired old joke about Nobel/Noble.
In Nobel's own words:
"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind."
Seems to me someone shouldn't win for doing something that benefits their pocket books first, and mankind second.
Angry emails to the Nobel Foundation, GO!
Postal address: The Nobel Foundation
P.O. Box 5232, SE-102 45 Stockholm, Sweden
Street address: Sturegatan 14, Stockholm
Tel. +46 (0)8 663 09 20
Fax +46 (0)8 660 38 47
E-mail info@nobel.se
comments@nobelprize.org
Re:Not Very Noble (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that from the quote form Nobel, the benefit to pockets of the inventors does not factor into it.
The piece of the sentence
states that
i) that the prize should be distributed annually
ii) some logistics dealing with the estate.
So Nobel's statement is, in essence, that we should give the Nobel prize to those who, in the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.
In comparing two discoveries we need to compare their relative benefit to mankind; the benefit of the individual is completely and utterly irrelevant. That is, it is irrelevant if the individual (or individuals) benefited more than mankind as a whole; nor does it matter when comparing the two discoveries which group made "more" out of their discovery pre-Nobel prize. Nobel's sentiment is solely concerned with the benefit to mankind.
To be blantent and explicit about it, pretend for a moment that "benefit" was an actual quantifiable measure. It is not, but we can still look at the logical structure of the statement. If we have two discoveries A and B with
A: mankind benefit: 500 personal gain: 800
B: mankind benefit: 505 personal gain: 2000
then "B" has greater benefit to mankind of these two discoveries. The last column is completely irrelevant. (BTW, personal gain will probably always exceed mankind benefit as the scientists gain the same benefit you or I would, plus whatever recognition etc. in their field, other prizes, awards, grants, etc. The only way I could see personal gain being less is if the personal sacrafices involved were worse than all the other benefits to the individual).
If you wish to argue that a patented discovery lessens the value to mankind as a whole, by all means go ahead. But the argument that you have presented simply does not hang together -- Nobel makes no comment (at least with the quote you have provided) about the discoverer's personal gain.
PS. If you did want to argue about something mentioned in Nobel's statement, it is that Nobel prizes typically don't go within a year of a device conferring the greatest benefit to mankind.
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Reminds me of the BSD/GPL license discussion. I like GPL. Nobel would maybe have been in the BSD-type camp?
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One company using it still gives more benefit to mankind than none, which would be the case if there was no incentive to do the research in the first place.
Or do you have some ingenious solution to the freeloader problem? Send us a postcard from Stockholm...
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"Insert tired old joke about Nobel/Noble."
This one?
""The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind using exclusively Nobel patented premium explosive products such as Dynamite(tm), Gelignite(tm), or a Bofors 40mm anti-air
No angry emails from me! (Score:2)
Prizes to those who...have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.
If that's the case, I'll have to dig through all of the checks for my patented penis enlargement pills to find the check from the Nobel Foundation.
Oh wait, the invention has to actually work?!?
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How (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem with this patent is enforement. How can they prove that you used the Steitz ribosome structure to design your new drug and not, say, the Cate structure, or the Ramashandran structure? If anything, real science would be utilizing all of the available data, comparing and contrasting bacterial and human ribosomes to determine which sites are relevant for antibiotics.
The coordinates are publicly available, anyway, so I could run MD on the structure for 1 picosecond and i would have "my" structure,
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I looked for this because I didn't want to post redundantly, but there's more that needs to be said, here: I'm no fan of bad patents, but Slashdot has mis-posted about patents time and time again. It's time that the Slashdot editors start doing some basic (and I mean 2 minutes tops) fact-checking of these articles:
1. Does the submitted article claim that a basic process or natural phenomenon is being patented while the source article claims that it's the process around utilizing these that has been covered?
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"this is arguably why the patent system was created: it's very important research, even basic research that could never be fully financed by patent royalties."
This sentence no sense make. The patent system was created to finance research which patents could never fully finance?
patents... (Score:4, Insightful)
New rule: you can not patent anything that you yourself did not create. No patents should be granted for any component of a naturally occuring system. Create an entirely novel system that doesn't exist in nature? Fine, have at it. On a separate note, it seems to me that with all the trouble we seem to be having with our 200+ year old patent system, that we ought to be able to devise a better system for encouraging innovation.
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New rule: you can not patent anything that you yourself did not create.
So, does that mean I can patent my children? Maybe they'll give me a Nobel peace prize for it too.
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Re:patents... (Score:5, Informative)
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"Yet" being the operative word =)
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I believe that patents reduce the total utility of discoveries for the society. Instead of rewarding past inventors with monopolies, we should reward future inventors with grants. The decision to reward a researcher with a grant should be based on many relevant factors, among them the history, the standing, the proposal. All know-how should be in the public domain, period.
The outcome would be better in every respect. Inventors would still be encouraged by monetary prizes (to what degree, no one can comput
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By that logic it doesn't cost any money to build a hotel, since all the money comes from the people who stay there.
You do understand what "up front" means?
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How long (Score:2)
Anyone know how many years the patents hold? TFA doesn't say.
Also, what are you prohibited to do in research? Is it a big problem? Why not move to Europe for researching?
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I'm betting that the Article doesn't list a lot of googleable knowledge.
Are you looking for something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995,[1] the patent term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications).[2]
Answers to the Article's conclussion: (Score:5, Interesting)
But should research so fundamental to life, such as the ribosome structure, be locked up for commercial gainâ"like Dynamite? Should a private institution, such as Yale, have the only say over how ribosomes may be developed into new biomedical technologies?
No, research should never be locked up. The patent system should evolve to the point where laymen with appropriate field knowledge and the right tools can copy ANY patented technique.
Yes, Yale absolutely has a right to decide what they do with their patent. If they sit on it, that's fine. There are other methods of doing what they learned to do. If the license it, that's fine too. Giving businesses the ability to benefit from their basic research is a good thing.
If Yale accumulates a big enough patent portfolio and tampers with the free market, they should be subject to government investigations and penalties. But in the case of Yale... they'll license to patent to bring in money to fund more fundamental research to future Yale scientists can advance the state of the art even further.
If the author really wants to attack stupid biological patents, he should investigate (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the biggest offender is) Monsanto.
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Not as evil as author claims? (Score:5, Informative)
From the article, ...cover not only the process for determining the structure of the molecules, but also the computation used to design new antibiotics.
Now, this might not be saying the whole story, but it doesn't sound like the ribosomes are what's being patented (which would result in ire here). Instead, it's a technique of how to find what molecules and bindings are used by the ribosomes (or something along those lines.)
The second part, the computation, probably a little more evil, but again it's a little light on details.
I could probably do a patent search and see exactly what the abstracts are...but I doubt I could understand them without a tl;dr and a chemistry glossary.
Basically, there's undoubtedly something patentable within this process it's just a matter of making sure they've got the right thing patented. I don't see anyone patenting a gene or a molcule here so there's no "nature made this already" defense. Furthermore, I don't think anyone can exactly make an "obviousness" claim here; USPTO might be pretty lax about prior art, but I'd think the Nobel committee would be a bit more thorough about trying to locate prior research.
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Kind of spoils the importance of the discovery, guys.
The importance of the discovery was spoiled when something that should never have been patentable was patented.
And yes, I understand the patents too.
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Actual, physical devices. And that's it.
Before you comment... (Score:5, Informative)
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They should strip the Nobels.... (Score:2, Insightful)
... from anyone who patents what they won them for. The prizes should reward altruism, not greed.
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Then strip the prize money from the award too.
Anyway, what would stop a pharmecutical from taking the method, getting their own patent for it and suing other people who use it into oblivion? In a utopia, you might have a point, but I'd rather Yale hold these patents than Merck, Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline.
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Is there anyway to patent something then effectively void it as if the duration was up thus preventing anyone else from patenting and locking it up?
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Sure - just provide a fee-free, unrestricted license. Patenting something means you control it, including setting it free.
Michael Crichton (Score:2, Interesting)
Michael Crichton novel Next... (spoiler) (Score:2)
Michael Crichton wrote a novel in 2006 called "Next" which addresses this issue, the sloppiness of laws regarding genes, genetics and patents, it is kind of on the mark with this topic. In that novel, a man's genes are patented by a company who is conducting a trial, and the company steals his child, claiming "intellectual property". Kind of precient, and scary stuff.
Misleading Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm with you that it is not the "fundamental components of biology" that are being patented. What I do not understand fully is what is being patented? The articles are rather vague when it says, "cover not only the process for determining the structure of the molecules, but also the computation used to design new antibiotics." It seems like Steitz et al are hardly the first to grow these crystals. See: co-winner Ada E. Yonath. Also, it seems like the computation is more of a software patent. Do we hav
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is very light on details, unfortunatly. I was personally hoping for a layman's description of what the patents constituted but instead it felt I was just reading an anti-patent tirade. But what was overlooked in the article is that they didn't patent ribosomes (which it sounded like what the author was trying to imply), but they patented a method for analyzing their structure.
The irony is this could be one of the best cases FOR having patents. Yale spends millions on research, makes a breakthrough, licences it out to Big Pharma and as a result Yale is able to get funding for more research.
I just wish there was more detail on the patents themselves rather than someone arguing against patents in general to make a better determination on how evil, to use the local patent buzzword, these patents actually are.
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It's the new methods of manipulating and studying them. I don't really see the problem.
The problem is the word "methods." Methods, of any kind -- business methods, software methods, scientific methods, etc. -- should never be patentable. Ever.
They want to build a specific machine that implements these methods, and patent that? Fine. But here's what they're claiming:
1. A method of growing a crystal of a 50S ribosomal subunit from Haloarcula marismortui comprising: (a) isolating a 50S ribosomal subunit fr
It depends entirely on investment capital ... (Score:2)
Remember: the primary valid purpose of patents is to allow the recapture of investment capital plus additional profits in proportion to the utility of the discovery.
If making these scientific discoveries is highly capital intensive, then patentablity is both useful and desirable because it encourages initial investment; eventually the patent will expire.
So, I would argue the key question isn't the nature of the discovery, but rather the necessary investment to make the discovery. A logical corollary is that
Re:It depends entirely on investment capital ... (Score:4, Informative)
I disagree.
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By what means does the patent system "encourage the development of new inventions, and in particular to encourage the disclosure of those new inventions" ?
When you quote "Inventors are often hesitant to reveal the details of their invention, for fear that someone else might copy it", to what do you ascribe the fear?
My post described the lower level mechanism of the goals to which you refer.
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The current purpose of the patent system is to create artificial barriers to entry.
Hello.... My Name is..... (Score:2)
Hello, My name is Bob (Patent Pending).
How long before we start patenting people....
Patenting what EVERY living being has .... (Score:2)
i cant even say 'prior art' .... unbelievable. in america, right ? every shit works there. every shit.
ribosome looks like... (Score:2)
David Goodsell does excellent illustrations and explanations of various biological molecules. Check out the molecule of the month at the RCSB [rcsb.org]. Among those is the ribosome [rcsb.org]
Missed the boat on this... (Score:2)
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No, it doesn't sound absurd. A patent expires after 20 years. Surgery was invented in the 18th century. Missing out on the first few years wouldn't matter anymore, since surgery is probably more limited by anatomy, biochemistry and pharmacological research than constantly inventing new techniques. Even better, a functioning patent system might have motivated
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It's true. The only problems with the patent system right now are:
* Patents in fields that advance far more quickly than physical industries are protected for the same amount of time (e.g. software)
* Patents can be trivially modified and re-submitted in order to "renew" an existing patent (e.g. pharma industry)
* Prior art reviews and obviousness tests are poorly done, relying mostly on court challenges after the fact to resolve such issues
Resolve those three problems and you have a patent system that accomp
Re:Patent (Score:4, Insightful)
Except this is much more complex than just cut and paste. You can't patent, say, a person blowing air into glass for the purposes of shaping but you can patent a machine that performs the same operation.
The problem with this blog post is the author seems more bent on proclaiming "they patented this, patents are bad, therefore this is bad" rather than saying what parts of the patents are bad. There's obviously something novel in what was accomplished here. USPTO might be ignorant to prior art, but I doubt the Nobel committees are as lax.
Plus reading the patent abstracts don't do me much good either; I lack the necessary background to make any heads or tails of them. (Hell, I can't tell the diff between an -ane and an -ene without a cheat sheet.)
What I can tell is they're not patenting the ribosomes or any resulting compound created, but instead some method of isolating and analyzing them. This at least opens the door for a patent and is what the patent system was designed to protect. We have a methodology now that blue chip pharmecuticals are taking advantage of hand over fist but would never have gone through the risk of actually pioneering; it makes sense to have some of that trickle down to the people that actually created the process so they can continue research and make more breakthroughs (and allow the cycle to begin anew).
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I'm pretty sure if our patent system had been in place at the time glass was invented, it could have been patented. Many people make the mistake of thinking "oh it's so obvious. Just melt some silicon and form it into a bottle using air pressure". But it's not obvious. And in that case it was one of humanities most important inventions. Think how much work went
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A properly working patent system is about free, open disclosure and sharing of knowledge.
I would argue that's an idealistic patent system. (And probably not a patent system at all.)
People, however, are not ideal. There are idealists who want information to be free, and then there's robber barons who only want to make a buck off everyone's creativity. Without patent protection, a little guy could make a fantastic product and then have it stolen by big conglom-o and have zero recourse. (Yes, I know that t
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I didn't. I was trying for an analogy to say you can't patent the human part of a process and I'm not sure I even hit that right...and it just went on its own track afterwards.
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Actually, I didn't know. Thanks for letting us know. It is indeed quite funny. (and proves my point).
To Summarize (Score:3, Insightful)
You could have stopped right there.
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You can't patent, say,..
Hold that thought [freepatentsonline.com], and that just the short list, make sure you read the claims.... The patent office has permitted everything to be patented. The problem is that when it come to the courts, its assume that the patent is valid and a default injunction passed without even considering whats in the patent...
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Re:license fee? (Score:4, Funny)
On the plus side, it does give you some leverage with poorly-behaved children. :)
"Eat your vegetables, or I won't pay your license fee, and Monsanto will come to take you away!"
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"Eat your vegetables, or I won't pay your license fee, and Monsanto will come to take you away!"
Imagine their horror when they grow up and find out that, indeed, the boogeyman from their youth does really exist :-)