nytimes.com — It means that if a real estate agent lists a house for sale, he can be sued because an existing patent for selling houses includes item No. 7, "List the house." It means nobody can write a dinosaur story because my patent includes 257 items covering all aspects of behavior, like item No. 13, "Dinosaurs attack humans and other dinosaurs."
Mar 19, 2006 View in Crawl 4
tek1024Mar 20, 2006
ad hominem: adj. 1. appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect 2. marked by an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions madeCf., the above comment.
fraggensteinMar 20, 2006
The article said 20% of genes are already patented. Since all humans undoubtedly contain those genes every birth since the patent is a potential source of unpaid royalties right.... Am I infringing a patent when my body does something governed by one of those genes? This is soooo wrong.
grimdotdotdotMar 20, 2006
Happily, the UK isn't quite as bad as the US - yet.It's only a matter of time, I suppose.
sgboothMar 20, 2006
What people focus on is obvious AFTER the invention has been made already. The test for whether something was obvious is whether it was obvious AT THE TIME OF INVENTION. Of course once invented, its obvious because somebody has made it already. Moreover, when people start copying the invention, it only serves to prove that the invention WAS NOT OBVIOUS.
godricMar 20, 2006
"Why would anyone in the patent office grant a company a patent for part the the HUMAN genome?!"Say you suspect you have a genetic disease. Your genome is part of you and part of the human race but do these facts bring you any closer to testing whether or not you have the disease? Do these facts help you figure out how the disease is being caused and how to treat it? No. Even though the genes are "part of the human heritage" you need specific knowledge to effect a cure. And that specific knowledge should be patentable.
macgyverMar 20, 2006
nope, wasn't a problem with the hosts file. I think it's something with my ISP, because I went to dnsstuff.com and tried to ping nytimes.com and it didn't get a response.
dan___Mar 21, 2006
Haha... that Michael Crichton...
johndiMar 21, 2006
I don't question that global warming is happening, just why it is. I seem to remember something called an Ice age and that Alabama used to be a sea. Recently they found that storms on Jupiter are increasing to the point it's developing a second giant red spot, that Saturn is having greatly increased lightning activity, and that the polar caps on Mars are also shrinking. Great scientists don't try to prove their beliefs, they experiment and found out why something happens. Global warming proponents tend to be prophets of doom, preaching beliefs. Often they do it for profit, many own patents to competing technology or are members of political activism groups that are quite lucrative (John Adams, the president of Natural Resources Defense Council was paid $368,342 in 2001). Like all political fights both side lie, and neither want to win, there is too much money in war whether with weapons or words. So global warming is happening, and has happened before, we can't stop it, but we might make it worse. The Earth will survive, and humans will adapt. Some people will make a tons of money and others will die. Sounds like business as usual.