Re: [DIYbio] Re: DIYbio projects

It's not concern of litigation, it's a matter of source derivation.

Yes, I can "DIY" my own proteins at home for lulz, and nobody will care
if I'm breaking patents.

What about if I give away/sell the plasmids, allowing everyone to break
the patents, and undercut the companies that currently live on
artificial scarcity, imposed by the patents?

Then I get sued. Not only that, their attention turns to derivatives of
the method, to cut off other problems before they appear.

Instead, we come up with "Free-Libre Open Source" DNA and methods, which
can be infinitely derivatised without fear of patent-trolling. It's
elementary, and obvious: this is where we're headed, and distractions
down patent-trollable dead-ends will only waste a lot of our time and
money as a community.

On 05/06/12 16:16, Simon Quellen Field wrote:
> 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.
>
> -----
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>
>
>
>
> 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.
>>
>> 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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>


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