Free Republic

Patent law is not something most Americans are passionate about or have ever contemplated -- which is exactly why the Obama White House and Congress got away with making radical changes to our time-tested traditions of protecting the fruits of entrepreneurial inventors' labor. It's yet another progressive horror story of abandoning what works in the name of what's politically trendy. For left-wing saboteurs and their Big Business GOP enablers, this means throwing our unique patent system and its constitutional underpinnings under an 18-wheeler. So-called "patent reform" proposals continue to plague Capitol Hill. But like health care "reform" and education "reform,"...

One-Fifth of Human Genes Have Been Patented, Study Reveals Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News October 13, 2005 A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities. The study, which is reported this week in the journal Science, is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs. "It might come as...