Human genetics : minutes of evidence, Wednesday 8 February 1995 ... / Science and Technology Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Science and Technology
Date:
[1995]
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Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Human genetics : minutes of evidence, Wednesday 8 February 1995 ... / Science and Technology Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    8 February 1995] [ Continued Chairman 402. But the discovery of what a gene does in that way comes a bit closer to intellectual property than it does to a patent, does it not? It is a piece of knowledge? j (Mr Roberts) It is a piece of knowledge, but most patents in the chemical area are based on new bits of knowledge. You use the new bit of knowledge to produce a new product or process. Dr Bray 403. But is there not some danger that patenting will inhibit basic research? If you look forward to the continuing interaction between basic research and industry, for example on how genes are switched on and off, on how this controls how the embryo develops, then matters will continue to be hugely important in pharmaceutical terms and in research. For the health of both it is most important that there be an easy communication between the two. Are you worried about too rigid definitions of what is patentable inhibiting the freedom of research and damaging the interests of the pharmaceutical industry itself? (Mr Roberts) | am concerned that we maintain a balance between the inventor and the public. In the patenting of genes our view would be that that is reasonably maintained provided that you do not get patents granted of too broad a scope which are too speculative or which have no utility whatever of a practical nature. As to how patents would be relevant to development, that important new knowledge would undoubtedly give rise to some patentable inventions, and they might be of a slightly different type from this gene sequence type that we have been discussing. Mrs Campbell 404. Mr Chairman, the question that I was going to ask has already been answered so perhaps I may move on and ask something else. Listening to what you say it seems to me that a rather subjective judgment comes in at some stage about how close to the market place a produce has to be before it is patentable. I think that what we are worried about is that if it is very far away from the market place it could curtail all other development, and a very wide range of development, and that is the danger. But I wonder whether you feel that the situation has changed in view of the events of the past few months and whether there has been any change in that very fine judgment about how close to the market place you have to be? (Mr Roberts) 1 would say not. Generally when these new inventions get to the Court of Appeal, the Court of Appeal looks at them with a fairly sceptical eye and it is doing the work, I would say, to preserve the balance between the patentee and the public. 405. What about the patenting and the academic research? We have heard from a number of people who have said—for instance, Dr Martin Bobrow— that people say you will not get proper commercial exploitation of this information unless the people who wish to exploit it have a patent, but the converse is that if one group have a patent you are absolutely sure that no one else will ever touch that so if they choose not to develop it, and they may well not fora variety of reasons, you can box yourself into a corner of absolute non-exploitability. Would you say that that was a danger? (Mr Roberts) I think that it can be a danger. There is also the opposite danger though that if there is no patent protection available for a particular development commercial companies are not going to spend money on developing, on safety research and on various things of that nature to bring the thing to the market. I still do not really understand why the research cannot continue. If people are doing research and they find some useful improvement (a) they may be able to patent it themselves (b) they will have a case for going to the owner of the patent and saying, look, this contributes to the initial invention that you have already made. Chairman 406. Could we just ask on that point and take your own company. Patents have been taken out on this or that gene. Does that in any way affect the direction of the research that your own company wants to go in? Do they look at the patent issue each week? Do you advise them “You can’t do that because ... ”? Is there a discernable effect as between the degree of new protection being taken out and the direction of Zeneca’s research? (Mr Roberts) Certainly Zeneca studies the patents very carefully as they come out week by week and when planning an area of research you look to see what is free before you start your research work, but because somebody else comes out with a patent on the area that you are working on you do not necessarily give up. This happened to Zeneca specifically with the tomatoes that we are hoping to bring to the market. Somebody else came out with a very relevant patent application slightly earlier than ours, but we continued with our research and we negotiated with them and we achieved a settlement which enables us both to sell in different market areas, and I would regard that as the sort of thing which should happen in this area. 407. Mr Armitage, do you have any comments to make in this respect? (Mr Armitage) 1 do not feel very competent to comment on research companies’ judgments as to what they do, Mr Chairman. Chairman: Very well, thank you. Mr Powell 408. I wondered whether you had got any opinions which you would care to offer us as to whether patent offices are too lax in applying the criteria of novelty and inventiveness to biotechnological patents? You mentioned, I think, Mr Armitage, that the United States was granting some very broad patents indeed and I am wondering whether you have got any opinions for us about different standards that may applied here in different countries? (Mr Roberts) There are sometimes problems in the biotechnology area. It being a new area, the Patent Office has to develop its practice. It is not like
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