[Note: I started a separate page about the practice of patent law in general and where my job fits into the big picture. Please check it out to get an idea of what I do. Thanks!]
For the last two months, I’ve been working as a technical advisor in the patent group of a law firm. It’s great to be back at a company; the environment and atmosphere is really much more suited to me than a research lab. Moreover, this is, so far, the best job I’ve ever had.
The conventional wisdom is that intellectual property is generally a good thing, although it can lapse into the absurd. Shakespeare is in the public domain, but just about anything printed in the last 100 years is not, even though the vast majority of it is long out-of-print. In the present tense, IP laws are intended to protect innovation and allow inventors to profit from their ideas. This is thought to drive innovation, and innovation ultimately benefits everyone. However, I've come across two examples recently where IP laws, while perhaps protecting innovation, nonetheless are not working in the public interest.
The first example comes from everyone's favorite evil corporation: Microsoft. Gates and company had some ideas about how to stop e-mail spam. They joined forces with AOL and maybe even Yahoo, and presented their ideas to IEEE, the body that approves standards for electronics and communications. IEEE considered the idea only briefly because they learned that Microsoft intended to file for a patent on their idea. IEEE can't very well make a patented process into a standard because that would force everyone to pay a licensing fee to the patent-holder. So someday we may be free from spam, but thanks to Microsoft, that day won't come soon.
While spam is certainly annoying, the second example is much more serious. A technology called DNA microarrays allows researchers to examine how genes are turned on or off in a cell across its whole genome. It's a very powerful tool and has the potential to give us great insights into the biology of cancer. In fact, there have probably been enough microarray experiments conducted on human DNA to date to be a tremendous boon to cancer researchers. Unfortunately, it's locked away in the intellectual property of dozens of companies. Each has just a piece of the puzzle, which is useful but not nearly as powerful as the whole picture.
To be fair, microarray experiments are expensive. The companies that do this work went into it with the intention of making a buck in addition to curing disease. As more or less a believer in capitalism, I think that's their right. It's just a shame that every once in a while, we can't put aside our materialism for a greater good. On the other hand, without the lure of riches, the microarray data wouldn't exist in the first place.
