Staking claims in the biotechnology Klondike.

My first brush with intellectual property came through defending free data release from the human genome project. I was amazed at the tacit acceptance by some that this information could and should be privatized. The product was not an invention: a genome sequence is a clearcut case of public domain material. People need a robust system for handling intellectual property, but patents have ambivalent effects. Patent protection stimulates some forms of creativity, and there are many winners. However, by stifling other forms of creativity, and by eroding the public domain, property rights create losers too. Patents are only one form of incentive, and most great scientific discoveries were made not for future claims to intellectual property rights, but for the fun and joy of exploration. The pressures to enclose the public domain are rife, reaching even into WHO — as we have seen in its policy over bird flu sequences, recently contested by Ilaria Capua.W1 The value of patents is often argued through parallels between the growth of patenting and increasing prosperity. But proof of causality is missing. One can equally point to parallelisms between obesity and prosperity or between global warming and prosperity. However, nobody suggests that obesity or global warming are causes of prosperity, they are unwanted by-products. Undoubtedly, robust patents have an important part to play, but we should be cautious in giving them too much credit for industrial success. I was at one time persuaded that strong patents would stimulate a wide variety of pharmaceutical innovation across the genome, but the field is now awash with look-alike drugs focused on a small number of targets. Evidently markets, not patents, drive drug development. The success of the biotechnology industry in the United States should be seen in the context of this country having a very effective public domain