What's needed is to ban all patents on life. It's also a form of regulatory relief.
What's needed is to ban all patents on life.
What we need is to revise all patent law in view of the societal cost/benefit of each patent to society. In Stuart England patents were awarded to royal cronies on such things as the sale of salt. This was done primarily to provide the Crown with revenue and was an example of royal parasitism.
In the USA patents are justified as encouraging innovation, but the whole manner in which patents are handled has become more a bulwark of the privileges of the powerful than a benefit to society. It does provides lots of employment for attorneys. Corporations will just cross-license each other to get around problems. But the system discourages the emergence of new players in existing fields. Small players will often publish their inventions, rather than patent them, so that they can retain the rights to their own inventions as part of the "public domain" rather than having to pay to have the invention patented and then having to pay attorneys to sue infringers--or worse, having them patented by a wealthier rival.
With regard to patented lifeforms, we may be presented with the spectacle of having aspects of our own DNA patented by others. Some company might "patent your ass" and then "sue your ass" for infringing on their patent! Then you could have some patent attorney arguing in court that your existence violates their patent rights. And you probably think I am only joking.
This is an area where a useful alliance might be made with traditional faith based groups. If "life is sacred" how can it be patented for the exclusive economic benefit of a specific human entity? Properly framed, "patenting the staff of life" could be problematic for many of the genuinely religious.
But it is complex. What if prohibiting patents on lifeforms prevented development of recombinant versions of microbes that never would or could be found in nature, but which could process cellulose into propane, ethane, pentane octane or long chain hydrocarbons? As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The original idea of patents was that by rewarding inventors, society would get worthwhile benefits. The justification was never cash-cows for big corporations.
When society quits benefiting patents should go.
Patents on life forms is already a negative. The Fates are kind.
hypothetical. The harm is real and already occurring.
Ah, well, another "might have been" moment ... unless the next head of the FDA wants to pick the fight on his own. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
