Clearing the patent thicket for stem-cell research
Merrill Goozner, Innovation in Biomedicine: Can Stem Cell Research Lead the Way to Affordability? PLoS Medicine, May 2006. Excerpt:
The IP system may be contributing to the slowdown [of biomedical innovation]. The current innovation system encourages researchers to patent and commercialize discoveries that in an earlier era were considered basic science insights. This has led to an active market in the building blocks of further research, which can be anything from a genetic sequence or a cell receptor to the reagents needed to culture cells. This proliferation of basic science patents has raised the bar –what economists call transaction costs– for other researchers who want access to those research tools. While many researchers, especially in academia, find ways around patent restrictions, and many companies have no trouble executing license agreements, there are cases where “patent thickets” have discouraged other researchers from pursuing similar or subsequent lines of inquiry. The stem cell field, which is still years away from its first approved therapy, has already experienced patent thicket problems….A recent survey by the United Kingdom Stem Cell Initiative identified nearly 18,000 stem cell patents issued around the world since 1994, with two-thirds issued in the US. The Washington-based law firm of Sterne Kessler Goldstein and Fox has warned clients that “any company or research institution that plans to develop stem cells for therapeutic purposes may face a number of blocking patents and applications that will require licenses, if available”….CIRM [California Institute for Regenerative Medicine] and other stem cell funders can become catalysts for cutting through this patent thicket. They can require that all grant recipients agree to donate the exclusive license to any insights, materials, and technologies that they patent to a common patent pool supervised by a new, nonprofit organization set up for that purpose. A patent pool serves as a one-stop shop where investigators can obtain no-cost or low-cost licenses for subsequent research.
