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August 10, 2005
All Your Pigs Are Belong To Us
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111
This Greenpeace article about Monsanto's international patent applications for pigs crossed my desk today. That's right, Monsanto is patenting pigs. "Curious," you might say, "but what does this have to do with Intellectual Property Rights in the game industry?"
I'm glad you might have asked.
WO 2005/015989 "METHOD FOR GENETIC IMPROVEMENT OF TERMINAL BOARS" appears (to a layman like myself) to be a patent on a selective breeding process that uses artificial insemination and DNA testing to produce pigs with superior genes for a certain trait, and then releases those pigs into a herd to breed and spread the genes.
WO 2005/017204 "USE SINGLE NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHSM IN THE CODING REGION OF THE PORCINE LEPTIN RECEPTOR GENE TO ENHANCE PORK PRODUCTION" appears (again, to a layman like myself) to be a patent on using DNA testing to see which of a herd of pigs has a certain gene, and picking the best one of those for breeding.
Here's my first point: any person with a vested interest in controlling pig breeding could tell you why these alleged inventions are unique and should be "owned" by companies like Monsanto, or even by individuals - but any person with a background in the basic sciences, and without a vested interest, could tell you why they should not be "owned" by anyone. I'll volunteer, as someone with no vested interest: Claim 1 of each of these patent applications, when stripped of technical jargon, looks a lot more like common sense use of available tools than like the spark of genius.
It gets better though.
2005/015989, Claim 7: "The method of claim 1 wherein the selected elite sire is selected for as having germplasm favorable for providing offspring having at least one of the following: one or more desired qualitative or economic trait locus/loci; one or more desired quantitative trait locus/loci a desired estimated breeding value (EBV); a desired genotype or phenotype; one or more desired health trait (s), one or more desired meat quality trait (s), one or more desired reproduction trait (s); or one or more desired efficient growth trait (s)."
Second point: since when are inventors excused from their obligation to disclose specifics? In laymen's terms, this claim is equivalent to "anything relevant you think of in the future, we own." Maybe you can sneak that kind of language into an employment agreement; it has no place in a patent.
Now let's look at 2005/017204. The Greenpeace article cited above takes issue with Claims 16, 17, 23, and 30. In these, Monsanto requests an exclusive license not only to the (arguably obvious) method and apparatus for producing genetically engineered pigs, but also to the resulting pigs themselves. In effect, the resulting pigs are licensed and not sold, and Monsanto retains control of their use.
Third point: anyone who's ever bought pure-bred, breeding livestock has probably already encountered this kind of restriction - but in a commercial contract, not in a patent. In my opinion, there is no public benefit (the patent system exists ultimately for public benefit, remember?) to allowing this kind of patent claim, and commercial contracts already provide a viable equivalent mechanism.
To summarize:
1) Quit trying to patent common sense.
2) If you want to patent it, teach it. Lay out all the details. Don't try to claim speculative futures.
3) The patent system exists for public benefit. If there's no public benefit to granting your claim, you shouldn't claim it - and if you do, the examiner should strike it. To bind someone, use a contract.
"Curious," you might say, "but what does this have to do with Intellectual Property Rights in the game industry?"
Genetic engineering, game engineering and pharmaceutical engineering are close industrial cousins. All three make money from the painstaking and often expensive initial creation of easily-reproduced arrangements of information. Intellectual Property precedents set in any one of these fields carry over, in my opinion, very quickly to any of the others.
Patent applications in each of these three disciplines show similar patterns of abuse: over-broad claims, attempts to obtain patent rights in what should rather be established contractually, attempts to patent common sense. Surely, we've seen these abuses in game industry patents as well.
I believe that Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property have genuine public benefit and create genuine incentives to innovators. When applicants abuse the law by trying to get away with as much as they can, including asking for rights they know full well they shouldn't be allowed, and nobody smacks them down, they undermine industry confidence in the system and sow the seeds of...
revolution.
Posted by ChrisBurke at August 10, 2005 06:30 PM
Comments
Trackback: This entry is referenced at http://weblog.ipcentral.info/archives/2005/09/games_ip.html
Posted by: JVDeLong at September 21, 2005 10:56 AM