Patenting genes: looking into the pros and cons of genetic patents

Intellectual Property is an intangible asset. It is a creativity of an individual that might have a commercial value. There are several types of items that come under the intellectual property rights like-copyrights, patents, product designs, etc.

In USA, the US department of Trademark and Patent Office is responsible for taking care of the trademark related issues. United Nations also controls the Intellectual Property rights related issues. Their role becomes particularly important when an intellectual property is sold across the globe. For example video albums of Michael Jackson are sold across the globe. In today’s digital world his copyrighted songs may be exchanged across the internet or offline. This results in copyright violations and loss for the music company, in terms of revenue, who holds the copyright.

United Nations does this with the help of its subsidiary known as the World Intellectual Property Organization (W.I.P.O). This domain of law is probably the fastest evolving. One of the several new emerging sectors in USA as well around the globe is nanotechnology and Biotechnology. This is another branch where Intellectual Property Lawyers need to adapt. This is because of its highly technical nature.


The Myriad Genetics (Utah, USA) company’s policy regarding genetic patentability of BRCA1 and BRCA2 and certain diagnostics procedure related to genetics have been criticized. There has been a huge debate on the pros and cons of patenting genes:-

• Biotechnology is closely related to the pharmaceutical industry. There are about 5000 patents granted in USA in 2001. This has promoted invention.
• It is relatively simple to implement patents on drugs or pharmaceuticals because of their simplicity.
• Patents encourage many industries to venture in Research and development.
• Before US policy of patenting items of the biotechnology sector, most research was either government sponsored or university projects.
• Patents might interest the venture capital firms to invest more in biotechnology sector.
• Patenting will promote collaborative research from a broad field.


The aforesaid advantages are not without its inherent disadvantages:-

• Forced specialization due to fear of intellectual property right infringement;
• Increased costs due to more frequent litigations.
• License fees of patented products will raise the price of the drugs for a common man.
• It may prevent creators from using the patented knowledge.

In USA several organizations are coming forward to bring the emerging biotechnology sector together. In Illinois one such organization is the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization. Its aim is to make the state and its surroundings an important life science centre. Every year it also hosts an award ceremony in Springfield, Illinois.


Chicago is an important source of funds for this sector. This is because it is the second largest business district in USA and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Stock exchange, etc is located here. If your firm has its head quarter in and around Chicago it is good to have a Chicago Intellectual Property Attorney. This is because the lawyers have big corporations as clients and knows how to deal corporate matters.