No one is going to sue you for using cold potato starch to purify proteins.
If you give people irrational fear of litigation, they will self-censor and not
do the wonderful things the group is capable of.
Governments give inventors temporary monopolies (patents) on their inventions
in exchange for publication of the details. This is in the public interest because
otherwise the inventor would try to keep those details secret. The purpose of the
patent system is to disseminate knowledge. We are supposed to read the patents
to understand how things work, so we can use that information to produce new
ideas, inventions, and discoveries.
Companies that own the patents will try to game the system to get the benefit of
the monopoly when the benefit to society would have happened anyway. Prior art
is one way that government decides whether the idea is already public. The courts
are there to protect the interests of society, not to protect the corporations, despite
the uneven playing field caused by corporate wealth.
But consider the case of a company with a patent on potato starch purification of
proteins and a DIYBio member using that method to purify her own proteins. Several
hurdles must be overcome before the DIY biologist is harmed:
- The company must become aware that someone is using their patented process.
- They must decide that suing her is the best use of their resources.
- They must prove in court that they have been harmed.
- They must collect the damages awarded, which are limited to the damage done plus a punitive amount designed to prevent further harm.
Given that the 'damage' is that the DIY biologist did not pay a few dollars for the
potato starch the corporation sells to be used for this purpose, the likelihood of the
lawsuit ever happening is small. Patent lawsuits are about people selling other
people's intellectual property, not using it.
-----
Get a free science project every week! "http://scitoys.com/newsletter.html"On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm working on this. I'd share the idea right away, but I want to
implement it first to guarantee that I've established "prior art" beyond
reasonable doubt.
The problem is, there are great methods out there, but they're patented
to oblivion. Consider Maltose-Binding Protein: You could, in principal,
just use cold (insoluble) potato starch to purify proteins. But, it's
patented in the EU for another few years at least, and possibly in the
US for the time being, too.
I've got something up my sleeve, but I don't want to put it into the
public domain until I'm sure nobody can steal/patent it and prevent it
from being used by the community. I'm sure patent apologists will insist
that this is unreasonable, but history says it's not.
www.indiebiotech.com
On 04/06/12 21:12, Cory Tobin wrote:
>> My suggestions would be:
>> - Enzymes commonly used in the lab that would save a lot of money when
>> produced by yourself, such as DNA restriction and polymerase, some are
>> available
>
> I like the idea of people being able to produce their own enzymes. It
> would be great if we could produce our own Taq, ligase and the four
> BioBrick restriction enzymes (EcoRI, XbaI, SpeI, PstI). With those 6
> enzymes one could not only work with most BioBrick parts but also
> bootstrap their lab and produce any additional enzymes they need.
>
> My main concern with this right now is the lack of inexpensive methods
> for purifying the protein. Most column based methods are expensive
> (NTA, etc). But I don't have much experience purifying enzymes aside
> from using kits. Maybe someone with more experience knows of an
> inexpensive method for producing enzymes pure enough to be used for
> BioBricks? This project http://2009.igem.org/Team:Washington/Project
> looked really promising but it looks like they never really got the
> system working and quit working on it.
>
>
> -cory
>
--
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PGP Public Key: http://bit.ly/CathalGKey
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