Denise Caruso’s new column at the New York Times kicks off with an essay on patents in the world of biotechnology. Most of the piece looks at how to build an intellectual property regime for biotechnology that serves the interests of society, not just a handful of companies. She cites a troubling, if not surprising, statistic: more than 20% of the human genome has already been patented, mostly by corporate biotech.
She also mentions the case of genetically-modified potatoes from biotech firm Syngenta. Not only are the GM spuds patented, they’ve been modified to be sterile without the application of a particular chemical. Potato farmers can’t “copy” the crop without paying a fee.
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