I think J. Craig Venter (the man whom Celera was built around) is a very interesting case in science and IP. He has made some very hard stands in IP during the course of the genome sequencing efforts. Some of them successful some of them not so. His autobiography is a very interesting read on trying to work with/around IP.
One big stand he made when starting Celera was how to manage data release to the public. He initially had the corporate sponsors of Celera agree to allow publication of his data every three months on the internet, but the politics of the time put a stop to that.
However contrary to the statement above that "Celera kept its results private and obtained IP on them" the Celera data was released publicly in feb 2001 (http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/announcement/gsp.dtl ; with some restrictions on commercial use).
To someone with a scientific background however, the points highlighted about Celera genes being under represented with genotype-phenotype links is unimportant. These linkages are not often found by picking a gene and looking for an effect, but tracing effects back to a gene; a public researcher looking for a genetic link to an effect would not be prevented from reporting these findings.
I'm not arguing that IP and the human genome has been a good thing, but this study, to me seems poor.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by JB.
(untitled comment)
One big stand he made when starting Celera was how to manage data release to the public. He initially had the corporate sponsors of Celera agree to allow publication of his data every three months on the internet, but the politics of the time put a stop to that.
However contrary to the statement above that "Celera kept its results private and obtained IP on them" the Celera data was released publicly in feb 2001 (http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/announcement/gsp.dtl ; with some restrictions on commercial use).
To someone with a scientific background however, the points highlighted about Celera genes being under represented with genotype-phenotype links is unimportant. These linkages are not often found by picking a gene and looking for an effect, but tracing effects back to a gene; a public researcher looking for a genetic link to an effect would not be prevented from reporting these findings.
I'm not arguing that IP and the human genome has been a good thing, but this study, to me seems poor.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by JB.
Submit a story now.