Patent system damaging research
pharmafile | October 28, 2003 | News story | |
The UK patent system is damaging scientific research and creating a old rush mentality according to the Royal Society.
The current system restricts the free flow of information among the scientific community, leading to delays in the development of new medicines, it says.
Prof John Enderby, Vice President of the Royal Society, said the system needs tightening or the sake of both science and society.
One of the main criticisms is that many patents are inappropriate, being too broad in their scope, showing a lack of true innovation or having little practical use. Such patents block other researchers from performing related work, said Prof Enderby, adding: his is tremendously bad for science, but the ultimate losers are the patients who wait longer for beneficial drugs to reach their hospitals and pharmacies.
Among the 30-plus recommendations it makes in its report eeping science open: the effects of intellectual property policy on the conduct of science the Society calls for the Government to make it clear to patent offices that their role is to examine patent applications thoroughly rather than granting as many as possible.
It adds that patent offices should increase their consultation with experts, especially in developing areas such as genomics.
It warns that the pressure to obtain patents may also be distorting research priorities at academic institutions, putting a greater focus on generating commercial, exploitable results at the expense of basic scientific advances.
The report also addresses other intellectual property issues such as copyright and databases. In particular, its says database rights were established to protect media and commercial interests and eward the creator of the database rather than the creator of the data.
It says the Government must to do more to ensure publicly funded data remains freely accessible to all, rather than being limited to private databases, where access costs can be prohibitive.
"It makes no sense to spend millions of pounds on research and substantially diminish its value because some tens of thousands of pounds are not earmarked to support databases that ensure full, easy and cheap or no-cost access for the scientific community",said Prof Enderby.
