Comments on: Piracy in the age of DIYbio

By: Will

Will — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:49:21 +0000

If it’s in the public domain – either now or previously – such as yeast and yoghurt bacterias are, then there can’t be patent. If someone inserts markers – i.e. just changes the culture very slightly then it could be argued that it is no longer in the public domain, though I would think that the patent would only hold if there was some added change to the gene sequence that provided a new effect or benefit.

By: Iron Ghost

Iron Ghost — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:31:12 +0000

If they have managed to specifically engineer the strain, or possibly breed the particular strain or strains they use in the product, and they have a patent on it, then it would be if you were making a profit of some sort off of it. Otherwise even if the strain is their proprietary property, they really can’t say anything as long as your not making a profit. If it’s a naturally occurring strain in nature, they probably can’t trademark or copyright it, so if you buy their product, and use it to start your own batch of live culture, then you can sell it if you want, and they can’t argue about it.

By: decora

decora — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 03:12:49 +0000

you can copyright anything that is a set of numbers. i.e. a DNA sequence is copyrightable if you make it.

if you dont believe me google ‘ps3 free speech flag’.

By: sourpuss

sourpuss — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 03:11:42 +0000

the answer is yer @#$@#$. look at what happened to GM potatos and GM corn. they have sued people who grew corn that accidentally got GM pollen in it.

now go look at the recent federal Justice Department ‘takedowns’ of domain names. they seized a whole lot of domains, some of them had nothing to do with piracy or copyright violation.

look at what is happening to George Hotz. he hacked his own playstation to install linux on it. for this he is facing something like 10 legal violations and they are trying to try him in california when he lives in new jersey.

We have the ‘war on drugs’, the ‘war on terrorism’, now we will have the ‘war on amateurs’. guilty until proven super guilty. your property seized and your career destroyed. who cares if there is a trial?

you guys making yogurt / beer / bread are enemies of whatever megacorp conglomerate owns the yogurt , beer, and bread companies – and their hedge fund string pullers, and their corporate debt owners. you say they cant own the common microbes in the air? Sure they can, just like Scotts Grow can sue some indie fertilizer company becasue it has green and yellow on its bag. Or better yet, once the companies figure out how to make more pervasive GM versions of the ‘common microbes’, they can sue anyone who sticks a bowl on their windowsill to make bread starter. Just ask the non-GM corn growers who have been sued for having a plot of non-GM corn within a blowin’ distance of GM pollen.

They won’t stop ’till they’ve done to you what they’ve done to the corn breeders, the iphone jailbreakers, the guy in the foxconn factory who was tortured to the point of suicide for losing an iphone prototype, the guy with a chemistry lab in his basement who got raided by the cops up in the Northeast, the kid who gets suspended from school for having a camping knife, etc etc etc. We are all just enemies of the system.

By: phDIY

phDIY — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 06:32:35 +0000

You actually can patent bacterial strains that you’ve isolated from ‘the wild.’ I’ve personally done it twice; I was doing research on them and needed large scale freeze-dried preparations (of a GRAS organism) and had to have them prepared commercially. So we patented the strains (isolated by us) and sent them off to protect the potential IP. They’re basically worthless and only of limited academic value, but we thought there might be the potential for something more.

By: Sondra

Sondra — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:17:45 +0000

Hi, great blog!

As a quick intro, I’m a cell/molecular biologist by training, an editor by trade.

I think that if patents, lawsuits and strong-arming began to threaten the ability of people to explore and innovate independently, a Bio-EFF (BFF?) would arise. I’d volunteer.

By: Considering A Patent Large

Considering A Patent Large — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:40:31 +0000

[...] Piracy in the age of DIYbio | DIYbio And I'm considering pitching (inoculating) my next beer batch with the two yeasts of that breton beer. Is this “fair use” If I give the culture to someone else, is that piracy? And what if I start selling my product? There are a lot of ways that new biotechnologies will affect how we think about piracy and patents but using naturally occurring strains (even if they come from a commercial product) in your own house doesn't seem like a big one. [...]

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:02:50 +0000

Interesting post and responses, and I agree with others that there’s no legal issue with re-using a non-GMO strain of some sort. But it’s interesting to think about where this would go if, using synthetic biology tools, companies began tweaking commonly used food-industry organisms used to make beer, yogurt, cheese, and the like. Imagine the label ingredient lists peppered with patent symbols. Investigators using DNA sequencing to detect patent violations.

By: Charlie Schick

Charlie Schick — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:47:45 +0000

Yeah, using at home should be no issue. But beyond the house, is it still no issue? While you might think these are “naturally” occurring, that’s an over-simplification. For example, the yeasts that commercial brewers use are strains they’ve had for some time, with particular characteristics, and can go back generations (indeed, walk into any brew-shop and see all the varieties of strains). What would they think if someone was selling the strain to others?

And “naturally” occurring never really kept back patents, as the patenting of genes proves. While something might be natural, there is an effort to find and isolate that particular natural item. And businesses want to protect that effort as a barrier to business.

I don’t want to make an issue where there isn’t one. But if you’re starting a business around non-GMO strains, where they come from might be important.

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 04:43:36 +0000

Open-source strains.