Fed: Greed overrides good in genetic research, inquiry hears

AAP General News (Australia)
04-30-2010
Fed: Greed overrides good in genetic research, inquiry hears

By Gabrielle Dunlevy

CANBERRA, April 30 AAP - Genetics researchers are too focused on making money for themselves
to solve global hunger, a Senate inquiry has heard.

The Senate's committee on agriculture on Friday held an inquiry into plant gene patenting,
amid concerns researchers are tying up future discoveries by using "catch all patents",
which cover their methods and the gene itself.

This could mean the best food crops in future are available only under licence to the owners.

Queensland University of Technology's Professor Richard Jefferson, an intellectual
property expert, told the inquiry only inventions, or "a human creative step", should
be patented.

In the early days of gene research, it was novel to isolate a gene, but it was now
"trivial" and should be difficult to patent, he said.

Prof Jefferson also called for reforms, particularly in public sector research, which
he said was too focused on making money from patenting steps in the research process,
rather than the eventual product that could benefit the public.

"They are all being encouraged, all of them, inappropriately, to look at monetising
their contribution instead of keeping a keen eye on the wealth creation from the use of
their contribution," he said.

"We will see successes, we will see Lexuses ... we will see silk suits.

"But perhaps at the expense of social and decentralised wealth creation in the farming community.

"The public sector's role is to stimulate those successes, not its own, and that is
where we are falling down, in almost uncompromising terms, reprehensibly."

Prof Jefferson has developed a "patent lense" - a tool to search for patents, freely
available on the internet - for non-profit group Cambia.

He said the patent system worldwide was lacking transparency, with his project finding
many DNA sequences that researchers have applied to patent, but haven't publicly disclosed.

There was also no way for the public to know who owned patents.

IP Australia deputy director general Fatima Beattie confirmed that under the law, an
isolated molecule with a practical application was considered an invention, and could
be patented.

Committee chairman, Liberal senator Bill Heffernan, said it was an important inquiry
not only for Australia, but the world, as it would affect the future of food supply.

"The patent law now is based on the past, before we came into the world of genomes
... maybe we need to update the law," he said.

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