Re: [dvd-discuss] Gedanken Experiment -Unix and Norton

[Jeme A Brelin <jeme(at)brelin.net>]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Michael A Rolenz wrote:
> The the chemical formula for Dopamine blocker, Valium, Librium, prozac
> or lipator is not protected by patent or even copyright since it is a
> fact.  The pharmaceutical patent is not on the formula. It is on the
> (unlicensed)  manufacturing and sale of the chemical.

That's totally false and belies a misunderstanding of pharmaceutical
patents.  I think you're trying to fit real-world patents into your own
idea of how things should be (i.e., you can't patent facts) regardless of
how far the real world is from your ideas.

The patent is on the chemical itself.  The patent does not specify a
process or a business model.  The chemical itself is the "invention" for
which someone holds the patent.

It might be possible to patent a particular PROCESS for producing the
chemical, but you don't have to do that until the patent on the chemical
itself has expired.

Every repeatable process or definable invention is, strictly speaking, a
"fact".  A patent covers any implementation or real-world use of that
fact, but not the information of the fact itself.  This is why software
patents are untenable; because they are both information and process.

> The creation of a new drug is a creative, time consuming and expensive
> proposition. I will not argue that the drug companies are abusing it.
> That they are becoming more concerned with marketing than they are
> creating new classes of useful drugs or concerned with comingup with
> another "me too" drug of dubious benefit.

Worse, of course, is that there is NO incentive to research CURES.  The
real money is in "symptom management".  A disease is just the mechanism
for addiction to these predators.

> As for the patenting non-obvious things....that's ANOTHER problem with
> the patent office that should be fixed but is not relevant to the matter
> here.

Here, we agree.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme@brelin.net
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