Vitamin B12 is cyanocobalamin...more commonly seen as cyanide.
Posted on 03/20/2006 4:46:40 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON - B vitamin deficiencies can cause a range of serious health effects, including spinal defects in children born to women with below-normal levels of folic acid and anemia in people not getting enough B12. That‘s why a two-step method of diagnosing those deficiencies that three medical school doctors patented in 1990 has become so widely used. It‘s performed tens of millions of times a year, at a cost of just a dollar or two, by laboratory testing companies nationwide.
Even more surprising is that the Supreme Court may dredge up a bombshell question not asked when the lower courts considered the case: Have inventors been busy patenting laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas?
The two-step method covered by patent No. 4,940,658 is straightforward: The level of an amino acid called homocysteine is measured in a patient‘s blood or urine and, if elevated, it can be correlated with a deficiency of folic acid, or B12.
In 1998, testing company Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings stopped paying some royalties on the patent. The patent‘s holders, including Metabolite Laboratories Inc. and Competitive Technologies Inc., sued. LabCorp lost, was ordered to pay about $5 million and then lost again on appeal. It now wants the Supreme Court to reverse the previous judgments.
"If someone observes a correlation between X and Y and then announces he is going to use that correlation in a lab test, is that a patentable process? I think the court is troubled that that sort of correlation would be possible," said Jack Bierig, a Chicago attorney who filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting LabCorp on behalf of the American Medical Association and five other medical groups.
"The test itself is obvious when you have the correlation. It is the discovery of the correlation that is the real novelty here," said Mark Lemley, a Stanford University law professor who is helping represent Metabolite Laboratories.
But the Supreme Court asked the federal government to weigh in on the case, specifically asking whether Metabolite Laboratories succeeded in patenting a law of nature, natural phenomenon or abstract idea — all no-no‘s under patent law.
The Solicitor General‘s office replied to the Supreme Court that the question wasn‘t asked in the lower courts and thus LabCorp‘s isn‘t the case to decide it. It recommended the previous judgment be affirmed or the case be dismissed or sent back to the lower courts.
Glenn Beaton, an attorney for Metabolite Laboratories, suggested:
Since the original LabCorp ruling, there has been a rush to file patents on "scientific facts" or "mental processes," he said.
The case is Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories Inc. et al., No. 04-607.
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On the Net: Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
Came across this on Groklaw...tomorrow is Alioto's first real day on the Court.
Vitamin B12 is cyanocobalamin...more commonly seen as cyanide.
*****************AN EXCERPT ******************************
At stake, attorneys on both sides of the case say, are 25 years of patent law and literally tens of thousands of patents on drugs, medical devices, computer software and other inventions. If the court reins in what can be patented, they say, it could be among the most important patent law decisions ever made.
Damn! There goes my patent on selling goods to customers for money.
That would have been a good one....
OK I will patent the corelation between glass, nails and sharp metal objects, flat tires, and the need to change out the flat.
Everyone anywhere who changes a flat tire from now on must send me a buck.
I will be watching!!
Good luck!
There are a lot of patents that need to be voided. Among other things, the "obviousness" test needs to be revisited to ask something to the effect of "Would this 'invention' be obvious given the existence of the technologies necessary to implement it practically." For many of the patents in existence today, the answer to that question is "yes".
To use an analogy from the early 1700's, it was obvious to many people that if a ship had a clock that could maintain home-port time within a couple minutes' accuracy, without being affected by the movement of the ship, one could use the difference between ship time and home-port time to compute longitude. Nobody thought such a clock could be constructed, but it was obvious to everyone that, if it were, one could compute longitude with it.
Many of today's patent cases could be regarded as being equivalent to someone in 1710 patenting the computation of longitude via timekeeper (without any clue how the timekeeper should be constructed), and then suing John Harrison for patent infringement when he invented a clock that actually worked for that purpose.
Although it should be possible to patent things before all the technologies to make them work are fully practical, the test of novelty for such patents should be stricter than for inventions which are practical from the beginning.
Might not this potential ruling also affect genetic modification?
It would appear that only the process that modifies the genetics would be patentable, not the end product.
Monsanto might just have to quit suing those farmers whos adjacent fields get Monsanto's modified pollen blown into them.
Most all novel ideas seem ordinary once the technology that makes them work becomes commonplace an well understood.
The lightbulb was a pretty novel invention. However, once you understand what a vacuum is and how keeping oxygen away from a filiment will allow it to glow without burning up, it seems pretty obvious.
However, it was a novel idea at the time.
To use an analogy from the early 1700's, it was obvious to many people that if a ship had a clock that could maintain home-port time within a couple minutes' accuracy, without being affected by the movement of the ship, one could use the difference between ship time and home-port time to compute longitude. Nobody thought such a clock could be constructed, but it was obvious to everyone that, if it were, one could compute longitude with it.
Patent law handles that situation just fine. If something is commonly known it's not patentable. The usuall method of proving something was commonly known is to present prior art such as writings about the topic, but witness testimony can also be given.
Many of today's patent cases could be regarded as being equivalent to someone in 1710 patenting the computation of longitude via timekeeper (without any clue how the timekeeper should be constructed), and then suing John Harrison for patent infringement when he invented a clock that actually worked for that purpose.
If they were the first to come up with the idea of using such a clock to measure longitude, they would have the ability to patent it for 17 years.
In 1728 when John proposed his idea for a Marine clock, the patent on creating such a clock would have alreay have expired.
However even if it had not expired, his ideas for ides for how the clock was made were in themselves novel, and could have been patented. Many patents include references to other patents. Patents protect the inventions of people while also allowing the inventor to make their inventions public.
They give inventors a way to make money off of thier inventions while also encourage sharing those ideas once they are protected, which helps encourage others to invent.
In other words someone figures out that they could figure out longitude with such a clock, but they can't figure out how to make the clock. They patent the idea to to protect their part, and they can then share that idea and with others to try and find other people capable of actually building the clock. Otherwise they might not tell anyone else about their idea because they are afraid the person who can figure out how to build the clock will make all the money off of the idea.
Although it should be possible to patent things before all the technologies to make them work are fully practical, the test of novelty for such patents should be stricter than for inventions which are practical from the beginning.
That simply discourages people from sharing their ideas. If the idea is novel when they come up with it, then it's a novel idea. People are already discouraged from patenting and sharing novel ideas that they can't implement because of the time limitation on patents, your idea would discourage people even more.
You idea is also unimplementable. How do we know what is going to be obvious in the future once technology that doesn't exist yet is common?
If anything we should be encouraging people to patent ideas that are not yet practical, because it brings out new ideas and stimulates others to find ways of making them practical.
The person who finds a way to make it practical also invents something novel by making it practical, and has their own invention to patent, so they don't get left with nothing either.
But suppose someone had patented the idea of making a lightbulb using a filament of a material that wouldn't vaporize (but did not specify what that material should be).
Patent law handles that situation just fine. If something is commonly known it's not patentable. The usuall method of proving something was commonly known is to present prior art such as writings about the topic, but witness testimony can also be given.
Suppose someone had, prior to the development of Viagra, patented the concept of correcting erectile dysfunction by using drugs to dialate certain blood vessels (without specifying what drugs should be used). Should such a person have been able to sue Pfizer for patent infringement?
If they were the first to come up with the idea of using such a clock to measure longitude, they would have the ability to patent it for 17 years.
In 1728 when John proposed his idea for a Marine clock, the patent on creating such a clock would have alreay have expired.
The analogy isn't perfect. Suppose John Harrison had managed to build his clock faster. Should he have had to pay patent royanties?
That simply discourages people from sharing their ideas. If the idea is novel when they come up with it, then it's a novel idea.
"Novel" ideas which lack practical application are a dime a dozen. Thomas Edison noted IIRC that invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration (or maybe he said 1%/99%--the latter figure would probably be more accurate in any case). Overly-loose patent standards focus too much reward on the "10%"; if something is not done, the long-term result will be that inventors will focus their efforts on recording vauge ideas for which nobody will develop any practical application.
You idea is also unimplementable. How do we know what is going to be obvious in the future once technology that doesn't exist yet is common?
In many of the more egregious cases, by looking for analagous uses of existing technologies. Suppose someone finds out that a company is planning to release a refrigerator powered by replaceable metal hydride bottles; should a person be allowed to patent the concept of using a hydride-powered refrigerator to cool lemon-lime soda, and demand royalties from anyone useing it to keep that particular beverage cold? If the hydride power refrigerator wasn't well-known prior to the person seeking such a patent, he may well be the first person to think of using it for that particular purpose. I would argue, however, that the use of refrigerators in general to cool many beverages including lemon-lime soda was widely understood; even if nobody else had thought to use that particular kind of refrigerator to cool that particular beverage, the "invention" would have been thought of the moment it would have been useful (i.e. as soon as somebody who happened to have that sort of fridge happened to have some lemon-lime soda he wanted to cool).
Incidentally, very shortly after the Pentium FDIV fiasco, I pondered the problem of long division and happened to independently develop a practical method of rapid division which it turned out Cyrix had just patented (I did a patent search after confirming that my method worked). I don't know if any programs like PGP use the method, though it would be suitable for both hardware and software implementations (and would be quite excellent for something like PGP). Even though the idea behind that patent might not have been "obvious", I would guess that the inventor and I aren't the only two people to have thought of it.
"Monsanto might just have to quit suing those farmers whos adjacent fields get Monsanto's modified pollen blown into them."
That farmer specifically selected the resistant plants through several generations of growings to steal the traits for his own use.
That's BS considering cyanide is deadly even small doses.
Hah! I've got you beat. I've just patented the correlation between FR threads and the words "bump" and "bttt". I'm gonna be rich. Muahahaha. :=)
BTW, bump. (I don't have to pay myself.)
The website states there are different types of B12 and discounts your statement.
"While being a natural chemical produced in the body, cyanide is toxic, and the body turns it into thiocyanate in order to excrete it. If this pathway is defective or overwhelmed through ingestion of too much cyanide (such as in smokers, or people in Nigeria who eat large amounts of cassava which is high in cyanide), the body may detoxify the cyanide by attaching it to cobalamin and then excreting the cyanocobalamin. Leber's optic atrophy, tobacco-alcohol amblyopia, and other eye diseases can sometimes respond to high doses of hydroxocobalamin which serve to detoxify the cyanide. In these cases, there may be too much cyanide in the tissues (preventing conversion of cyanocobalamin to methylcobalamin or adenosylcobalamin) for cyanocobalamin supplements to be effective in maintaining B12 status.1 In such cases, a different form of B12 should be given (speak to your health professional)."
I'm not a patent lawyer, but I suspect that patent wouldn't get approved in that form, or would get invalidated if it were.
There are lots of things that cause blood vessels to dilate. The vast majority don't seem to be very useful in erectile dysfunction. Which blood vessels do you need to dilate? Which ones do you need to contract?
If you leave it too vague, you won't likely get through the patent process, and if you do it's likely that someone will have tried something that fits within your vague description before and your patent will be invalidated.
If you make it too narrow, someone will find a way to accomplish the same goal without following your narrowly defined claims. Which is why there exists a wide variety of patented erectile dysfunction drugs.
A lot of people make the mistake of readin patent abstracts and thinking that the patent is extremely vage and broad. Patents are writen in very specific language and the meaning of their claims is parsed very carefully when determining if something violates them.
Read over the appeals court ruling in this case for a better idea of how the courts look at patents to see if they are being infringed upon. They go through the notes from the patent office on what was originially claimed and how it was narrowed down and more clearly specified while going through the long process of attaining the patent.
Patents aren't simply vague claims like some people act like they are.
Suppose someone finds out that a company is planning to release a refrigerator powered by replaceable metal hydride bottles; should a person be allowed to patent the concept of using a hydride-powered refrigerator to cool lemon-lime soda
I think you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that using a new method of refrigeration to refrigerate a commonly refridgerated item is a novel idea. The new method of refridgeration might be novel and patentable, but using it for common purposes isn't novel even if you narrow the scope to lemon lime soda.
Incidentally, very shortly after the Pentium FDIV fiasco, I pondered the problem of long division and happened to independently develop a practical method of rapid division which it turned out Cyrix had just patented (I did a patent search after confirming that my method worked). I don't know if any programs like PGP use the method, though it would be suitable for both hardware and software implementations (and would be quite excellent for something like PGP). Even though the idea behind that patent might not have been "obvious", I would guess that the inventor and I aren't the only two people to have thought of it.
Well, if it was being used before the person who applied for the patent "invented" it's use, then that's prior art which would invalidate the patent.
That's not saying
Damn! There goes my patent on selling goods to customers for money.
That would have been a good one....
I am working on a patented process of using fermented grains to produce a drink that makes women better looking.
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