Briefly, the paper shows how an international collaboration on the search for a breast cancer gene lead to Myriad US patent for BRCA1; how the second gene BRCA2 was patented by Myriad mere hours before another lab was going to announce it at a conference. It documents the development of rising international anger. It shows how Myriad grew more diverse even while it recorded losses of over $7million a year. More importantly, it reported that the US and Canada invested $3 billion and $300 million respectively to spur biotech research which presumably resulted over the years in revenue of $47 billion and $2 billion respectively.

Investments by the government will lead to new research and patenting will spur commercialization. However, the participants must understand the various ramifications of an evolving, technologically advanced and aging society. Most therapies of the aged are going to be based on biotechnology. Aging by its very nature is genetically controlled. This debate will touch all our lives. Researchers enjoy collaborations and dislike being billed for using patented technology, resulting in less cutting-edge research on the topic.

Your second argument about Myraid is about business strategy not about patents. Patents do not require a lack of collaboration – in fact they are often vital to making collaboration possible.

With respect to Myriad and its patents, the research continues in only their labs, and their recent failure in a phase-3 clinical trial is exemplary of what happens when only one entity can PCR amplify or mass-spec separate a targeted gene: stagnation.

If gene patenting is stopped will genetic research continue? Undoubtedly! However, will that research be commercialized at the current risky pace and bring life – saving drugs into society? Coming from a country where lack of patenting can drive non-genetic business, I can easily say that life – saving drugs will not originate at the current pace; it will slow to a trickle.

Monetary rewards for genetic research have made this field the new ‘gold rush’. I have seen Pharmaceutical giants wonder why the well-paid scientists in their laboratories cannot come up with new inventions at the pace of university collaborated biotechs. Their pipelines dried up in the last decade while biotechs in the same period came up with a diagnosis and cure for breast cancer, small molecule therapies, EPO, a cure for Leukemia, and monoclonal antibody therapies and more. All of them originated through good patents and the Pharmaceutical giants are now racing to identify the lucrative ones to license. Without the current system of patents – most of these inventions would languish in respected peer – reviewed journals.

The answer to innovation lies in the environment created by a society and government supportive of the inventor. The average inventor is creative and will do it for the ‘fun of exploring science in all its glory’ and is not concerned about monetary rewards. However, one must also act on this knowledge. That is where the business minded need the support of wonderful, giving and kind people like David Koepsell.

Every one benefits at the end of the patent term. Generics can be sold a little above cost. Sure enough many cannot afford the $3000/- for a breast cancer test today. However, we have several public options other than stopping the patenting process:
1) let’s start a foundation to cover diagnostic costs for those not covered by health care;
2) let’s participate in the current health care debate and see how we can help those in need;
3) let’s set up focus groups to identify good inventions and set up a public foundation to pay a billion dollars for each and every invention which shows promise.

Stem cell researchers have assured many investors that our current society will live well beyond the age of one hundred. Some of us will die before those inventions are marketed. Some may see in their lifetimes the clinical trials of the ‘aging gene family’. However, the rest of us will have a new worry – how do we save for a hundred years of retired living?

To the extent the Swiss were innovative it was because they obtained patent rights, not in spite of patent rights.

With respect to taking an unfair advantage, everyone from other countries who uses the US patent process to obtain rights they cannot get in their home countries has an unfair advantage compared to US inventors and innovators, and that should stop.

I think the solution here is to simply say that inventors and innovators are not allowed to use the US patent process unless they grant the same scope of exclusive rights as granted in the US. That would quickly demonstrate the need for strong patent protections.

-Gene

You are incorrect that “in all areas of economics” property rights encourage economic activity. In fact, our newest Nobel prizing winning economist has spent much of her career proving that is incorrect. I am a HUGE believer in property rights, but they only make sense in situations where there is a question of how to best allocate resources. The entire point of a market-based property rights system is to allow for the more efficient allocation of a scarce resource.

But the problem is that once you enter into a world where the resource is not scarce — such as an “idea” — economists will tell you that a property rights system makes no sense at all. That’s because you don’t need efficient allocation when there’s abundance. In fact, all a property rights situation does in that case is increase transaction costs in order to decrease market efficiency.

Finally, I fail to see how a claim that “monopolies are bad” is extraordinary. In fact, the burden is quite clearly on you. Economists make it quite clear that monopolies lead to less efficient outcomes. Yet, you are claiming that this is not true when it comes to patents. That is an extraordinary claim, and you fail to provide a shred of evidence as to why such basic economics does not apply to patents.

We have seen study after study after study that looks at the history of innovation in places without patents or with weaker patents. It has been compared to neighboring countries with stronger patent systems. They have been compared to right after or right before changes in the patent system occur, and they ALL show the same thing: a patent system does not increase the pace of innovation and often decreases it.

There is plenty of evidence to support that position. There is none to support your extraordinary claim that monopoly rights suddenly make sense when they make no sense in any other area of the economy.

The anti-patent crowed has failed to carry its burden of proof. Ae know that in all areas of economics where it has been tested private property rights encourage economic activity. We also know that when the government establishes incentives, it always results in more of the incentivized activity. We also know that countries with the strongest patent laws have the most innovation and the greatest technology diffusion and vice versa those countries with weak or non-existent patent laws have little or no innovation and little technology innovation. Despite this the anti-patent crowd asks us to believe that patents do not follow the normal rules of economics and logic. As Thomas Paine pointed out in his book The Age of Reason, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The anti-patent crowd has failed to provide extraordinary evidence to support their extraordinary claims.