SARS Researchers Rush To Patent Their Discoveries

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

06 May 2003

Laboratories which rushed to isolate and decode the SARS virus, still wreaking havoc worldwide, are now rushing to establish intellectual property rights to the bug's genetic make-up.

Versitech Ltd, the commercial arm of the University of Hong Kong, has filed patent applications on the virus, which the University's scientists were first to see under the microscope, and are in negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to produce diagnostic tests for the disease. And in Canada, the British Columbia Cancer Agency, where the virus's genome was first decoded, has filed a provisional patent application in the US to establish IP rights over the complete genetic sequence of the coronavirus.

The establishment of intellectual property rights over naturally-occurring organisms is still contentious, with many scientists believing that the distribution of discoveries with medical usefulness should not be restricted by limiting their ownership; but they are now in a minority, and the willingness of most national patent offices to entertain patent applications for genomic constructs or discoveries has led to a worldwide competition among research labs and pharmaceutical companies to benefit from medical advances in the field of genetics.

In most countries, patent applications for scientific discoveries have to be made before the discovery is published, leading to a race against time for scientists who want the kudos of being first, but whose institutional employers want to profit from patenting a discovery. In the US, however, there is a one-year grace period after first publication of a discovery during which a patent application will still be accepted.

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