Re: [Patents] SARS and public domain patent.

[Russell McOrmond <russell@flora.ca>]

On Tue, 6 May 2003, Ricardo Andere de Mello wrote:

> Finally someone did what everybody should do, fill a patent request for 
> public domain.
> http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cp_health_home&articleID=1323070

  I too glanced at the beginning of the article and assumed they were
doing something positive.  If you read the entire article, you realize
this is not the case. Information that should be freely available to
protect public health and the public good is being restricted in order to 
receive royalty payments.

  This appears to be yet another case where an administrator (bean
counter, patent lobbiest, corporate welfare bumb, anti-capitalist,
whatever) is disrespecting the scientists involved and filing for patents
on subject matter that the scientists don't believe should exist:

I just posted an article on this issue at:
  http://weblog.flora.org/article.php3?story_id=407


Note: There is no such thing as a "defensive patent" that is royalty
bearing.  These media outlets have been duped in the patent lobbies
attempt to make patents on such things palatable to the public.


> Here in Brazil university researchers are patenting a lot of things 
> discovered with public money...

  I guess I will always believe that organizations should have a choice of
government incentives:  temporary monopolies or government
grants/subsidies, not both.  Universities which receive public money
should be *mandated* (as a condition of funding) to file all research as
"prior art" with patent offices, but not be allowed to hold patents.

  Further thoughts were part of my draft article from months ago that
never got published: "An IP Ownership solution: Knowledge shared,
knowledge gained" http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/ip-conundrum.html

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 May 9, 2003: Come out to the 1-Year Anniversary of the GOSLING Community!
 http://www.goslingcommunity.org/ Get Open Source Logic INto Government