Who Owns You? Corporations Patenting Your Genes

A debate between IP opponent David Koepsell and patent attorney Gene Quinn about gene patents. As noted in IP Debate? (see also Gene Quinn the Patent Watchdog and Is It So Crazy For A Patent Attorney To Think Patents Harm Innovation?), Quinn previously said he wanted to debate an IP opponent, before transparently banning me from his site after I called his bluff; then David Koepsell offered to debate Quinn--it was supposed to be held yesterday at Cardozo law school, but then Quinn backed out, and finally agreed to the online thing you see above. Good thing for him he was not there face to face to present his embarrassingly weak "arguments."

[SK cross-post]

Pro IPers all have the same argument... It's a silly, thinly veiled excuse to rationalize their unethical behavior.

In general, I'm not anti-patent at all; but I believe that, at present, gene patenting may present a somewhat different issue. Certainly it is significant that a U.S. Health Department advisory group just issued a report indicating that too much gene patenting and accompanying patent litigation can detrimentally affect genetic research and patients' healthcare options. Square that, however, with another report released this week, showing that university/corporate R&D partnerships have become critical to the economy. There needs to be a thorough balancing of interests in regard to this question; I look forward to reviewing more of the arguments on both sides.

"Square that, however, with another report released this week, showing that university/corporate R&D partnerships have become critical to the economy."

I'm highly skeptical of such reports. Every corporation puts out papers showing how critical they are to the economy. They use such papers to make erroneous claims that bailouts are necessary for the airlines, banks, and GM.

Consumers get to make decisions about what they want through free market transactions, if the goods and services being produced by these companies are truly critical to people, then one would expect their critical nature to be revealed by consumer demand for them. GM wasn't critical, we already have cars made by other manufacturers, and they do a better job at it than GM. Resources are currently being wasted on GM - who make cars that most people don't want - when they would be better spent going to companies that make things people do want. Wealth creation instead of wealth destruction.

The "balance of interests" mentioned by Gena777 presupposes that companies should be able to weigh in on what consumers should be doing with their own money, usually with companies convinced they shouldn't have to please consumers, but just be able to justify themselves to a government official as being important because they happen to pay workers while they lose money. Paying workers to produce things people don't want isn't good for the economy (if it were we could just pay people to dig holes and fill them back in). When bad companies are paying workers to produce goods or services that lose money, they're wasting investment resources that could go to more productive use: actually creating wealth instead of destroying it.

>> showing that university/corporate R&D partnerships have become critical to the economy

I'm sure some in the past have also felt that razing towns had become critical to their economy as well.

A pirate (a real one) largely believes, today, that raiding ships has become critical to his/her economy.

Change the rules that free the participants in the economy from the stifling shackles of these patent monopolies and you will solve the economy's dependency problem.