The 44th of 50 Genetic Ideas You Really Need to Know, the wonderful primer by Mark Henderson, is titled ‘Gene Patenting’ and it opens with a quote from John Sulstom, the human genome sequencer: ‘A genome sequence is a clear-cut case of public domain.’ As Henderson describes, in the 1990s a ‘land grab’ of patenting human DNA took place. But there has been a backlash: ‘many patents on genes are now collapsing under legal challenges. . . . An intellectual property system is emerging that applies to genetic technology, but not to genes themselves.’
How important and how dramatic, I reflect. Let me see if I can follow and make sense of the complex battles that are no doubt being waged right now over legal ownership of the very stuff of humanity.