Private property above all: Can correlations and other scientific facts be patented?
Karl Marx warned 150 years ago that capitalism tended to turn everything into a commodity, a form of property, to be bought and sold. Increasingly in recent decades ideas become private commodities, subject to patent or copyright. Even laws of nature, and thoughts themselves, have not been immune to this barbarism arising from the fetish of private property and the (controlled) “free market.”
The Supreme Court today takes up an important case determining whether laws of nature, and thought processes, can be patented. [B Vitamin Case Reaches Supreme Court] While I’m cautious with this court, I certainly hope that the absurd US patent law whereby correlations between measurements and numerous other aspects of nature are patentable. While they’re at it, I hope they strike down patenting of the human genome, as has occurred for 20% of our genes. Where are the religious fanatics who argue that man, and science shouldn’t intrude on God’s realm. Surely patenting laws of nature or the human genome are prime instances of intruding on God’s domain. Or does the right to profit trump all for these folks?
Add comment March 20th, 2006