DNA Patent/Copyright Law?

[betanic]

A certain biotech company has this line to their limited use license for plasmids:

"No modifications to the protein coding sequence of the FPs may be made without the express written permission of COMPANY."

This does not specify at all the extent of the "modification", without that specification couldn't anything be considered a modification?

[Cathal Garvey]

If you are buying from them, then the conditions are probably stipulated by some click-through contract. In which case it might not be patent or copyright law, but contract law.

In any case, it seems that patent law is the dominant law of DNA, disgusting as that is. Copyright is of dubious application as it does not cover "facts", but the precedence of copyright applying to computer code *could* be argued to extend cover to human-created DNA sequences, which is the position I and others would take, as it allows us to also apply copyleft.

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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[Koeng]

Copyright doesn't cover DNA sequence in the states (or at least, never tried). Personally, I think copyright for sequences is a really bad idea - look at Mickey Mouse, and then imagine that's CRISPR. Copyright allows for pretty much indefinite IP property rights that are extremely easy to get. Patents expire after 20 years, so in a way they were the original open source to prevent company secrets.

[John Griessen]

I think we are due for patent redo with shorter than 20 years duration since tech change has sped up.
Maybe covd-19 will spur more thinking on it by lawmakers since some dropping of secrecy and open collaboration on viral therapies,
tests, etc is getting to be news.

On 5/8/20 12:32 AM, Koeng wrote:
> Copyright doesn't cover DNA sequence in the states (or at least, never tried). Personally, I think copyright for sequences is a
> really bad idea - look at Mickey Mouse, and then imagine that's CRISPR. Copyright allows for pretty much indefinite IP property
> rights that are extremely easy to get. Patents expire after 20 years, so in a way they were the original open source to prevent
> company secrets.
>
> On Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at 4:31:52 PM UTC-7, Cathal Garvey wrote:
>
> If you are buying from them, then the conditions are probably stipulated by some click-through contract. In which case it
> might not be patent or copyright law, but contract law.
>
> In any case, it seems that patent law is the dominant law of DNA, disgusting as that is. Copyright is of dubious application
> as it does not cover "facts", but the precedence of copyright applying to computer code *could* be argued to extend cover to
> human-created DNA sequences, which is the position I and others would take, as it allows us to also apply copyleft.
>

[Marc Juul]

On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 4:31 PM Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

If you are buying from them, then the conditions are probably stipulated by some click-through contract. In which case it might not be patent or copyright law, but contract law.

and there's a chance it's both, or someone could have a patent but the people who you bought from are licensing from the patent-holders and enforcing certain restrictions on you through an MTA (material transfer agreement) or similar.

 

In any case, it seems that patent law is the dominant law of DNA, disgusting as that is. Copyright is of dubious application as it does not cover "facts", but the precedence of copyright applying to computer code *could* be argued to extend cover to human-created DNA sequences, which is the position I and others would take, as it allows us to also apply copyleft.

Yes but then the question becomes: Is something like a fluorescent protein coding sequence really a human-created sequence if it's a slightly modified naturally discovered sequence? Was the modification a creative work or was it arrived at completely programmatically? (e.g. creating a bunch of localized mutations, measuring which resulted in improved/changed light output and picking the best ones). 

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marc/juul