[IP] Navigating a Patent Minefield
Begin forwarded message:
From: Claudio Gutierrez <gutierrezclaudio@xxxxxxxx>
Date: August 4, 2004 9:43:00 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
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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