This Blog Post Breaks U.S. Law

[c9]

• The Earth revolves around the Sun.

• The speed of light is a constant.

• Apples fall to earth because of gravity.

• Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes.

• Elevated uric acid is linked to gout.

• Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease.

• Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.

ACTUALLY, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient's test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.

Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and many other popular novels, has something to say about U.S. patent laws. He may be a complete and utter charlatan when it comes to environmental issues*, but on this one he's bang on.

* An essay on Michael Crichton and Global Warming (PDF)

Comments

[sassy-red-head.livejournal.com]

WTF? Every day I am more happy to be living in Canada. I have a B-12 deficiency and I would hate for my doctor not to tell me because of fear of being sued!

If she didn't tell me I brobably would be sleeping my life away right now.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Don't get too comfortable -- we're doing some crazy shit with intellectual property and patent laws here too, just we're behind the curve. It's important to keep an eye on government and big business so we don't end up in the same traps.

[sassy-red-head.livejournal.com]

Oh I know. My ex's brother was spearheading the privacy laws for a while and it was a little messed up.

[ex-halfwitte432.livejournal.com]

This is kind of scary.

fflc

[c9.livejournal.com]

What does fflc mean?

[ex-thrasymac191.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of on the fence about this, and I'll tell ya why:

The patenting of chemical processes is pretty uncontroversial, and it's basically owning exclusive rights to the use of knowledge of a fact that existed independently of the patent holder, but that wouldn't be obvious to other, say, metallurgists. These metallurgists may be able to pay a licensing fee to use the patented knowledge in some way that will be of benefit to them in their work, even though they may eventually understand every minute aspect of the process inside and out.

Let's pretend that using vinegar to remove hard water scaling from the inside of a coffeemaker carafe were an example of a chemical process that could be patented, meaning, among other things, that it weren't such an obvious solution to the problem of hard water scaling (which I'm not actually sure it is, I would just throw away the carafe). Then let's say that a company launched a carafe-cleaning service, and thousands of people sent in their carafes for cleaning. If that company learns about using vinegar to clean those carafes, and there's a patent held for that process, why wouldn't they have to pay the licensing fee for it, even if they eventually figure out how it works and so forth?

Similarly, doctors wouldn't know to treat a b12 deficiency if they weren't told about this correlation. They have all the means to use the patented correlation in a way that is of benefit to their work, just like the carafe-cleaning company probably had some vinegar and a sponge kicking around, but they only know to use those means because somebody discovered this correlation and, smartly, patented it. For the same reason I would agree with a court upholding the patent on the vinegar cleaning method, I support it upholding the patent on the b12 diagnosis correlation.

Having said that, I think maybe it should be excluded legislatively from being eligible for patenting in the first place, but that's the only thing about this that has me on a fence.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I think I come at it from a very naive place: it's knowledge, and knowledge should be shared so that the world becomes a better place.

Currently, I could sit alone in a locked room with no internet or phone, and just think about a problem. Using my knowledge of programming, I could then code a solution to that problem, but due to patents my solution would be illegal. That deeply bothers me.

I support reimbursing companies and individuals for hard work -- that's why there are salaries and retail prices and markup, etc.

I support reimbursing companies and individuals for new devices, including the patenting of the (presumably unique and hard to manufacture at first) device.

But patenting an idea, like "One-click shopping" on Amazon, or a concept, like "people get sick without enough of this vitamin," seems far and away outside the realm of reasonable. To me, that is.

[ex-thrasymac191.livejournal.com]

But it's not, "people get sick without this vitamin", it's "a deficiency of this particular vitamin can be identified because of its correlation to the amount of this particular thing", and what would someone's incentive to discover that correlation in the first place be if they weren't able to profit from it in some way? Altruism? Not a lot of drive in that engine. Where would a salary for them come from so that they could focus on biochemistry instead of holding their place in a breadline so their children wouldn't starve? No company could justify paying it if they wouldn't be able to profit from their work by selling it in some way. It would be like the Soviet Union, and I will take my cyanide pill before I eject over that territory.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect that if today's patent structure were in place earlier in the 1900s, many things we take for granted as being gone (polio, smallpox) would be only gone for the rich. I would not be surprised at all to learn that there's already a vaccine for malaria which is not being distributed; there would be no way to profit from it, only poor people get malaria.

For comparison, Bill Gates has stated that the patent structure we see today would have made DOS and Windows almost impossible, and left us 20 years behind on the technology curve.

In my naivete I wish altruism was enough. :)