I have serious issues with the very idea of patenting actual organisms, pre-existing or slightly modified genetic codes, and so forth. How can something that has existed for millions of years be considered novel? If somebody patented me (and for all intents and purposes they have), do I have to pay royalties for existing? Why should someone be able to take credit for somebody else's long pre-existing wisdom, just because they have the resources to patent it overseas?

It all flies directly in the face of the spirit of patent law.

I think the Creator has "Prior Art" locked up ;-)

Andrew,

Could you please explain how genetic codes became patentable in the first place? Patenting a plant that was developed makes sense, but patenting a genetic code that was discovered in the wild sounds like patenting a number, which never used to be allowed. I expect that the brief answer is "because rich companies wanted it that way", but surely there are some details that would prove interesting as part of the "debate" over bio-piracy.

Thanks,

Larry

The international intellectual property regime forbids free trade on any goods or services affected by patents; instead, it designates one monopolist, usually a corporation, and gives it the sole right to sell the affected goods or services. The right can be sold, or bartered with other organizations that also have large numbers of patents. But new participants (read: third world countries, new startups without backing from established companies) are frozen out. WIPO, the GATT, NAFTA, and CAFTA have all expanded the scope of the patent regime, meaning that processes and compounds that nature invented can be patented. Traditional healers who rely on medicinal properties of plants could be found to be violating patents, even when the patent-holders learned about the properties from the very same traditional healers!

Some of the proposals for fixing this attempt to sign up third world countries by offering a bit of graft: a payoff to the countries where the useful medicinal plants (or other substances) are found, in exchange for cementing corporate rights to patent the natural world (of course the elites and not the public would wind up with these payoffs). This is wrong. Patenting natural substances should be forbidden.