Gillis, Anna Maria. "The Patent Question of the Year." BioScience. Vol. 42, No. 5. pp. 336-340 .

This short article examines the implications that followed from the American National Institute of Health's (NIH) application for a patent on components of nearly 5% of all human genes, in 1992. The article is particularly useful for the way that it outlines the various threads of debate that arise from the issue of the application of intellectual property rights on genetic material.

One of the primary arguments against patenting is the fear that data exchange between researchers will be compromised, as scientists guard the "secrets" of their research in the hopes of discovering potentially patentable material. There is also concern that incentive to do further research on a gene is diminished if another scientist or laboratory already holds a patent on parts it; the fear is that this diminished incentive slows the "natural" pace of scientific research. It is further argued that the description of parts of a DNA sequence does not constitute a new invention, but rather is information that may have been generated through the grace of a new procedure; it is this procedure then, and not the information which should be patented. Finally, the breadth of the claim is such that it calls into question not only the ethics of the application, but the enforceability, and makes it all but impossible to predict what is the specific usefulness of the information, which is one of the criteria for granting a patent.

The NIH defends its right to the patent application by arguing that as a publicly funded, government body it will be "socially responsible" and will operate "with the underlying premise that it wants potentially beneficial products to be developed" (338). Opponents argue nonetheless that "patentability is a legal question, not a scientific one," and that the potential impacts both on scientific research and legal precedence are enormous. The final and most damaging criticism offered is that this effort by the NIH to obtain such a large patent offers "an extreme example of a widespread practice in biotechnology that seeks to control not discoveries, but the means of making of them" (339).