[Gllug] Patents *again*

[Paul Rayner]

On 19 Jan 2006, at 00:17, salsaman wrote:

> Paul Rayner wrote:
>
>>
>> On 18 Jan 2006, at 22:33, Peter Childs wrote:
>>
>>> Now I read that Patents Kill. Not nessessary software patents but  
>>> Medical ones make developing drugs very expensive and hence slow 
>>> down  research and hence are killing thousands every day.
>>
>>
>> So if the medical patents weren't granted, who would spend the money  
>> required for the development of new drugs? I agree that the system  
>> isn't perfect, but like capitalism in general, nobody has come up 
>> with  a realistic, better alternative. Pharmaceuticals wouldn't spend 
>> the  sums they do on drug development if the patent system wasn't 
>> there to  protect their investment. I think that if you left all 
>> medical research  to governments, scrapping medical patents, the rate 
>> of development  would be much slower.
>>
> You seem to be under the misapprehension that patents are only granted 
> on drugs. That is not so - see this article:
>
> http://www.pubpat.org/LabCorp_Position_Statement.htm
>
>
> I am curious to know if you think it is productive to allow these type 
> of patents to be granted ?
>

I suppose the argument from the patenting company is that testing for 
B12 then for homocysteine is a patentable process. Taking what was 
stated in the article, in my view the patent should fail the test of 
being non-obvious as once the fact that the two are related is known, 
the action is obvious, and facts are not patentable, As I said 
previously, the tests of patentability are often not applied strictly 
enough - especially in the US. As the US healthcare system is 
completely private sector, they must have the use of the patent system 
to encourage development of new processes, and processes must still be 
patentable. If a company spends the time and money to develop a 
completely new treatment process, which contains an inventive step, 
they should be able to patent it. The medical field is obviously an 
emotive one, but you have to ask yourself if the work would have been 
undertaken in the first place were it not for the patent system.

> Regards,
> Salsaman.
> http://lives.sourceforge.net
>
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--
Paul Rayner
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Paul.Rayner at YlemSolutions.com

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