As an update to my post on the ACLU suit challenging the patenting of genes, Kevin Noonan of Patent Docs has a great post from yesterday that discusses how the debate has gone from patent law circles to the mainstream.
He contends, and I agree with him, that most of the anti-patenting arguments in the debate are based on a misunderstanding and outright mischaracterization of the law and science surrouding the issues. He references editorials in the New York Times on the issue as well as debates on NPR and adequately addresses most of the arguments against gene patenting. There is a fairly extensive debate in the comments to the post between Dr. Noonan and Professor David Koepsell that is worth checking out.
Today, Patent Docs has a post referencing an editorial in USA Today written by Jim Greenwood, President and CEO of the Biotechnology Industrial Organization (BIO) that the isolation and purification of genes has led and is leading to many new therapies, vaccines, drugs, and other innovations in the health care and pharmaceutical field.
I would suggest that as long as the other sections of the Patent Act that preclude patents whose claims are not novel, non-obvious, or adequately disclosed and enabled, there is really no need to have a particular prohibition on a particular category of subject matter per se. This applies equally to genes, software, and business methods.
