Patent Law

This is something I find interesting and ethically controversial yet know little about. From what I understand, stem cell technology has been patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a nonprofit technology transfer office that acts as a funding source for the University of Wisconsin. These patents include the methods for isolating or purifying primate and human embryonic stem cells. In order to do anything with embryonic stem cells (no matter how they are derived), you have to have permission from the U. of Wisconsin.

This really limits research involving embryonic stem cells. Luckily, academic nonprofit institutions are much less impeded than commercial entities (whose licenses cost anywhere from $75,000 to $400,000 a year). Indeed, companies like Invitrogen are pursuing embryonic stem cell research abroad because the patent's jurisdiction is limited to the U.S. But still, the U. of Wisconsin has made hundreds of millions of dollars from this one technology. They have a team of something like 32 lawyers defending these patents.

There are several issues of concern here. First, what are the parameters for patenting a scientific methodology? (What if someone had tried to patent antibodies?) What are the costs and benefits to the public? Is the cost in impeding commercial research in a field worth the security offered to investigators in disclosing scientific ideas and discoveries? Also, are there certain values or principles that underlie a decision by an academic scientist to patent research rather than publish it?