Enclosing The Ocean Commons
from the insult-to-humanity dept
Cross posted from Open....The oceans belong to everyone - well, more or less. That is, they form a classic commons. But of course, that fact doesn't stop people from claiming that they own stuff even here:
Molecules derived from marine resources and used for medical applications were worth over $1 billion in 2005, and heat-stable enzymes obtained at undersea vents were worth $150 million. Not surprisingly, the business community has responded by patenting genes derived from marine organisms; the authors were able to identify over 8,500 sequences derived from a total of 520 species in a US gene patent database.
This is a double insult to humanity. Genes are part of the DNA commons and "belong" to everyone or to no one, but certainly not to any one entity. Those genes were extracted from marine animals, which form part of another commons, the oceans' ecosystems, that also belong to everyone or to no one.
But instead of simply recognising those commons, and letting everyone benefit from them directly, the best the patent maximalists can come up with is a cartel, a.k.a. patent pool:
they also suggest that, in the case of marine materials, a patent pool organized within this framework might improve access to genetic information and distribute the risk and profits broadly among far more nations, rather than limiting it to the few countries that can afford high-throughput DNA sequencing.
The logic here seems to be that, of course we need patents, otherwise nobody will go to the trouble of sequencing all of these interesting organisms. What this overlooks is that the cost of sequencing genomes has come down from a billion dollars (for the first human genome) to a few thousand. Next year it will probably be under $1000, and the year after that a few hundred. In a decade, sequencing will cost almost nothing.
What this means is that, once more, intellectual monopolies are being given away needlessly - no quid pro quo is in fact necessary because practically anyone will be able to do this for very low cost. And, once again, it's you and me who lose out, as knowledge is sent to the intellectual equivalent of Davey Jones' Locker....
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Filed Under: commons, dna, monopolies, oceans, patents
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All I am pointing out is the logic is sort of twisted.
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That's a bit of a stretch.
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All I am pointing out is the logic is sort of twisted
Kind of amusing that you seem to use the exact opposite logic in your comments on the appropriation art post... You are the one claiming that what Prince has done is not new, because it uses the work of others.
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Without the research, we would have nothing. In the Prince case, we already had something (art), and he added little or nothing to the concept.
Finding, researching, and understanding how nature works, and then potentially using those discoveries to move to market isn't any different than discovering electricity or simple single plant medicines. That didn't stop those from being patent in their time.
Sorry Mike, you are trying hard, but once again you fail (and show that you don't seem to understand the difference between two subjects). I am wondering is this explains some of your weird points of view.
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If an archaeologist finds a book or a musical score from a thousand years ago, he doesn't get the rights to it. And the DNA of marine life predates that by oh, I don't know, six orders of magnitude or so...
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Sound is a natural phenomena, and the musical scale is basically just the mathematical explaination of naturally harmonious sounds.
We didn't invent sound. It was already there.
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Yup, and you are not allowed a patent upon it either.
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I'm concerned that you think we are talking about brand new DNA being engineered - that's not what's happening. We are talking about the isolation of specific organic elements from existing living things.
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quids?
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Re: quids?
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So...
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pro
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Incorrect: "Davy Jones' Locker". There's only ONE Davy Jones, and since it's his locker, the correct placement of the possessive would be: "Davy Jones's Locker".
/soapbox
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astounding
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Cheap Gene Sequencing
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