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LA Times Errors Found in Patent for AIDS Gene, Scientists Say
"Scientists have uncovered what they believe are glaring errors in a patent issued last month to Human Genome Sciences Inc. for a human gene that plays a crucial role in AIDS.

The company's description of the chemical makeup of the gene contains at least four significant mistakes, according to research scientists, an allegation that legal experts say could allow the company's competitors to attack the patent's validity.

But Human Genome Sciences officials say that because the company isolated the gene first, any errors in describing it won't matter--it is still entitled to royalties from anyone using the gene to discover new treatments.

"When we file a patent, we don't claim the sequence as the invention," said William A. Haseltine, chairman and chief executive of the Rockville, Md., company, which has filed about 7,500 gene patents. "The invention we claim is the gene we deposit with the ATCC. We know that our sequence and most sequences are not perfect. "Anyone who wishes can go to the ATCC," he said. "It's the same as the olden days, when inventors used to deposit a little model of their inventions.""

HMS Beagle Patenting Genes Is It Necessary and Is It Evil?
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"Last October, biologists' neck hair rose when J. Craig Venter announced his company, Celera, had filed 6,500 provisional patent applications for human genes. Henry Ford mass-produced automobiles - it seems evident we are now entering an era in which intellectual property is rolling off the assembly lines. Is this really the ultimate legacy of Watson and Crick's elegant double helix? And what does it portend for the future of biology?"

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“"You're not a designer, you're not a writer, and you're not an editor!"

Well, no, blogger, you're not. And therein lies your gift. Because even if it's true the vast majority of blogs would not be missed by more than a handful of people were the earth to open up and swallow them, and even if the best are still no substitute for the sustained attention of literary or journalistic works, it's also true that sustained attention is not what Web logs are about anyway. At their most interesting they embody something that exceeds attention, and transforms it: They are constructed from and pay implicit tribute to a peculiarly contemporary sort of wonder.

...[T]he Web log reflects our own attempts to assimilate the glut of immaterial data loosed upon us by the "discovery" of the networked world. And there are surely lessons for us in the parallel. For just as the cabinet of wonders took centuries to evolve into the more orderly, logically crystalline museum, so it may be a while before the chaos of the Web submits to any very tidy scheme of organization.”

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