Navigating a Patent Minefield

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Claudio Gutierrez <gutierrezclaudio () terra cl>
Date: August 4, 2004 9:43:00 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Navigating a Patent Minefield

Researchers in Iowa have come up with a plan to get critical genetic 
tests to patients at risk for rare but devastating eye diseases. It's 
working now, but they worry their plan could be a legal time bomb.

Edwin Stone and Val Sheffield, professors at the University of Iowa, 
have discovered links between 15 genes and certain eye diseases, which 
means genetic tests could be developed for the diseases. But often the 
scientists find the genes or parts of them have already been patented. 
Any diagnostic test involving a patented gene could infringe on 
someone's intellectual property.

Most of the genes are linked to diseases that affect a small number of 
people, too few to make tests based on the genes commercially viable. 
So Stone and Sheffield had an idea: Why not just ask the patent holders 
for permission to test patients?

<snip>

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,64452,00.html

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