[daughart]

It will take millions of dollars of research to turn this basic bioengineering technique into an approved (safe and effective) human therapy. How do you motivate investors to fund this research without the safety net of a patent to protect that investment from free-loaders?

[jedberg]

The way it was done before patents -- government funded research institutions whose only motivation was to provide scientific breakthroughs so they could continue to receive government funding.

[daughart]

There's a huge gap between the scientific breakthrough and the work needed to create a safe and effective therapy. It's not academically interesting, and academic scientists won't do it. It's optimization, not discovery. And what about the cost of the clinical trial, which could be $500m?

Government funded research institutions will continue to provide BREAKTHROUGHS to receive funding.

[jedberg]

> And what about the cost of the clinical trial, which could be $500m?

That's an interesting one, because that cost is entirely caused by the government. The government could for example fund clinical trials, since they're the ones who are interested in it's results (as is by extension the public).

As for the rest, if the science were freely available without a patent from the scientists, companies could still spend money making it a therapy and making a profit by doing it better and more efficiently than their competitors, and they could still get a patent on their work.

We're talking about making the science patent free, not the product.

[daughart]

It's an interesting distinction here. I would argue that the science is already free. The Cas9 protein is a natural product. The guide RNA can be synthesized easily. What is being patented here is use of Cas9/CRISPR to edit human cells. In a general sense that is actually the product, and not merely "the science." In other cases, where the Cas9 protein is engineered to achieve things like lower off-target cutting rate, that is a pretty classical case of human invention.

[biehl]

Exactly. An evaluation of the efficiency of "buying" clinical trials with patents would be very interesting.

[wavefunction]

That's a very cynical and inaccurate appraisal of "The Time Before Patents."

Most scientific breakthroughs throughout history were pursued due to simple curiosity or necessity, precisely because without an international framework of patent law "patents" and the pursuit of technology as intellectual property directly for financial gain was impossible.

The British for example attempted to control physical access to textile IP but Samuel Slater[1] memorized as much as he could and "exported it" along with himself to the Americas to reap a fortune.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

[gohrt]

What if someone want to cure a disease that the government doesn't care about?

[akiselev]

How about the way we do it now, with patents on devices, therapies, and drugs that are approved by the FDA instead of on the techniques used to develop them? There is even a way to extend the patent life of these developments to account for the amount of time it takes to receive government approval with a maximum term of 14 years after approval [1]. Patenting such a fundamental technique as CRISPR will only set back research for more than a decade and prevent most investors from funding further research while giving companies a huge headstart if they are located outside of the USPTO's jurisdiction.

[1] http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/SmallBus...

[daughart]

The technique used to develop the therapy is not really what is being patented here. In practice, anyone will be able to use CRISPR for research purposes or to develop therapies. The question is, why would you invest in using this to develop a product when you can't actually sell the therapy? The product in question here is a therapeutic CRISPR composition for use in human cells. Lots of people will still invest in the technology and research because it is so valuable. If you invent a novel variant with better cutting properties, for instance, or a modification that reduces toxicity, those would be novel compositions of matter and could easily be the foundation of a new business venture.

[justaaron]

quite simply, you don't. the motivation is to be either first to market, or have some advantage to your process. If you do the research, you can hold it tight to your chest until it's time to announce your product, by which time you will have a significant advantage over any competition, the amount of time of which is a factor of the difficulty of the subject matter... there's your graduated incentive. low hanging fruit will get plucked. good.

regarding costs of governmental approval: they are a problem. the government will need to use our tax money for this sort of activity rather than shiny new weapons, I suppose. Their fees are absurd. Approval of a specific substance as a treatment for illness ought to be borne by the same public sector that owns it in my common-sensical world i suppose...