A Palm Springs, San Diego & Orange County Law Firm Looks at the Worldwide Patenting System and It’s Harmful Effect on Medical & Biotechnology Research

If you are employed as a scientist or as a company do research anywhere in California, including cities where biotechnology and other medical science is being studied or where research takes place, especially the areas around cities such as Irvine, Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, La Jolla, Riverside, Fullerton, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and other cities where there are universities or large research projects taking place in the U.S. and throughout the world, you know that patent laws and patent licensing is acting as a barrier to medical and biotechnology research and preventing advances in science.

It doesn't take a California patent attorney or lawyer to say how the world's patent system is today acting as a barrier to medical and biotechnology research that could solve many of today's worst diseases and preventing breakthrough treatments, medicines and even new seeds for better crops.

A new report has come out after a seven year study and confirmed what most patent licensing lawyers, medical researchers and biotechnologists have known for years. The patent system in force worldwide is broken and preventing breakthroughs in science.

Without a means for sharing information, blocking patents are causing delays in developing advances in cancer medicine treatments and in the development of new food crops.

The report performed by a Canada based partnership cited as examples of medical advances being delayed as those of HIV/Aids drugs and cancer screening tests.

Of concern to scientists is an increasingly bare medicine chest of new life-saving medicines that are critical not just to the developing world but to the industrialized nations as well to address disease. New food crops are also lagging behind that could help address hunger.

And while stem cell researchers apparently patent the most, they collaborate least according to the report.

What happens is that "blocking patents" act as barriers to research and advances in biotechnology that could advance cancer treatment, new medicines and new crops.

When biotech firms race to file a "fortress" of patents around newly discovered genes, research by their competitors is effectively blocked.

Another example given by scientists is work on genes that cause breast cancer in European countries that has been held up by patents held on specific genes by one biotech company in the U.S. With patients in European countries unable to meet the cost of certain cancer screening tests, they have been effectively denied access to such tests.

A recommendation of the report is that companies should be allowed to form "patent pools" where they could cross-license their patented technologies without losing royalties from their patents. It is also recommended that governments develop other public and private partnerships to conduct joint research.

The criticism of the current patenting system is that it acts more as a barrier than as an incentive to research and the development of medical or other biotechnological breakthroughs.

When a patent office grants dangerously broad patents, entirely new areas of research, such as in the field of nanotechnology, can be cut off.

So long as intellectual property and patent laws act as a barrier from others utilizing and expanding upon one scientist's research, the laws will prevent scientists from making advances that can benefit mankind. This lack of sharing is preventing biotechnology from becoming the field that it once promised. 

If you have a patent legal issue in Irvine, Orange County, La Jolla, San Diego, in the Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Palm Springs or anywhere in Southern California, we have the knowledge and resources to be your Newport Beach Patent Lawyer and your Palm Springs Patent Attorney. Be sure to hire a California law firm with patent and licensing lawyers who can serve areas such as Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Anaheim, Irvine, Newport Beach, Carlsbad, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Fullerton, Del Mar, San Diego, Orange County, San Luis Obispo, Buena Park, La Jolla, Oxnard, Ventura, La Quinta, and Santa Barbara so you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.

If you need to file for a patent or have an patent legal issue of any kind, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com  and learn how we can assist you. You can also call us to speak directly to Sebastian Gibson on the phone about your legal matter.