[Wolves] folding@home? only if a stanford professor folds my washing

[s parkes]

I can't see anywhere on the folding site (perhaps I am missing something 
obvious) on who owns the results of research done on the folding@home 
project.

given stanfords agressive stance on patent issues I assume that they will 
patent all findings and grant expensive licenses to a few biotech companies.

a list of the top ten money earning patents at stanford can be found here 
(http://corporate.stanford.edu/innovations/invent.html) the top earning 
patent, on Recombinant DNA Cloning Technology, was worth $255 million.

Not only are all discovers licensed but some of them are exclusive 
potentially excluding valuable research.

It looks like the exclusive use of some of stanfords patents go to a company 
called RHeoGene and they consider the protein folding work key to reducing 
their production costs.

"Enabling optimization of product quality through metabolic engineering of 
the host cell to control important cellular processes, such as" ... "protein 
folding" ... "all of which are important contributors to product quality and 
quantity." - http://www.rheogene.com/html/business_development.html

They use the patented ip to commercialise gene technology.
"The exclusive license improves RHeoGene's ability to develop and 
commercialize its core gene regulation technology" - 
http://www.rheogene.com/html/business_development/intellectual_property.html

this does not seem to benefit human kind as some that suggested it seems to 
be of most benefit to the venture capital companies that support rheogene.  
A search on google show who these benaficaries are.

It seems that although the project could be more helpful to human kind that 
seti you are all lining the pockets of big fat americans who will soon get 
richer rebuilding countries they demanded their unelected president flatten 
then open up markets in.

Personally I am not going to contribute to the greenhouse effect (dispite my 
energy coming from windpower 
;-)http://www.npower.co.uk/html/juiceandwindpower_4467.htm) to help fat cats 
get fatter.

sparkes





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