High definition telemedicine is already becoming popular amongst those who are unable to personally interact with their doctor/physician/dermatologist, perhaps because it gives a much clearer and detailed view of the patient making it much easier to appear that they and the doctor are in the same room.

However, the disadvantages remain and as it is early days, high definition telemedicine may not be affordable for everyone just yet.

As to your concern about gene spreading, I am convinced that this is relatively unlikely, especially since pollen from corn cannot fertilize any other plant than corn. Corn is generally planted with new hybrid seeds that are produced each year in islolated areas specifically capitalize on hybrid vigor and avoid the type of cross contamination that you mentioned.

Thank you for the great post, and for citing the IP-valuation article I co-authored with Paul Flignor. Your comments are right on point. The patent laws have been getting weaker due to recent legal developments in the Courts. Innovators are advised to work harder now to secure their invention rights.

Best,

Prof. Orozco
http://www.proforozco.com

This blog discusses the disconnect between promoting the commercial development of genetic resources (GR) and traditional knowledge (TK) in developing countries and the mandatory disclosure of the physical source providing access to the GR or the country of origin of the GR in patents, as proposed by the European Community and its Member States (EC) to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This article indicated that the disclosure requirement is an additional hurdle to obtaining a patent and would weaken the patent regime in developing countries, resulting in the discouragement of commercial investment in the developing countries that need these investments the most. Indeed, countries such as Brazil, India, and the Philippines that have adopted mandatory disclosure requirements for patents have experienced a reduction in commercial investments and have therefore experienced reduced benefits from their GR and TK.
Industry, including pharmaceutical companies and even small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries, are vehemently opposed to the mandatory disclosure requirement for GR and TK in patent applications. Most commentators only discuss the negative effects that the disclosure requirement has on developing GR and TK related products, and neglect any discussion of why industry is so resistant to the disclosure requirement. For example, the American BioIndustry Alliance (ABIA) proposed in a recent article in Forbes that the disclosure requirement is simply unnecessary because many developing countries have implemented online searchable databases of GR and TK. Others have suggested that the disclosure requirement is costly, putting an unreasonably high burden on industry. Still others suggest that the disclosure requirement is unnecessary because many companies routinely negotiate benefits-sharing agreements with the country of origin of the GR or TK.
However, the reasons for industry resistance to the disclosure requirement are incomplete and inadequate at best. The disclosure requirement as proposed by the EC to WIPO merely requires that the country of origin of the GR be disclosed in the patent application. The EC proposal explicitly does not require that the source of the GR be disclosed, unless the country of origin is unknown. The EC proposal states “the applicant should be required to declare the country of origin of the genetic resources, if he is aware of it. No additional research on his part would be required.” The obvious inquiry then becomes: If the patent applicant will only be required to name the country of origin if known, and the disclosure requirement is unnecessary because most companies do share the benefits of GR with the country of origin anyway, then why is industry so vehemently opposed to this requirement?
Industry opposes the disclosure requirement because the current system of commercializing GR and TK can revolve around confidential and exclusive licensing agreements with the country of origin in which industry has the bargaining power. Further, developing countries currently have difficulty in monitoring whether industry is respecting a country’s policy on access to GR and requirements for benefit sharing. Thus the current system of commercializing GR and TK is beneficial to industry because the system reduces competition, promotes secrecy in negotiations, and preserves the bargaining power of industry. Understandably, industry will fight hard to preserve these benefits.
To promote investment in developing commercial products from GR with developing countries, industry and many commentators advocate doing what works, not what may be ethically right. This begs the question: Should developing countries just take what they can get or can developing countries more effectively manage their valuable GR and TK through alternative means apart from the disclosure requirement?
One important tool available for developing countries, and advocated by industry including the ABIA, is material transfer agreements (MTA). Such Access and Benefit Sharing Agreements (ABS) agreements, negotiated on Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) following Prior Informed Consent (PIC) can include the assignment of intellectual property rights to one party, benchmark requirements for assessing progress in the development of the technology, and royalty agreements. MTA’s are highly adaptable contracts that can capture the special needs of the parties, whether between two companies, nonprofit institutions and a company, or between a developing country and a company.
Public biological and information databases such as the American Type Culture Collection, Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank, Protein Data Bank, and the NCBI Entrez Genome Project are another important tool to assist developing countries in monitoring the use and patenting of their GR and TK. These public depositories store biological samples and many types of scientific data including protein sequences, gene sequences, and crystal structure data. Requiring that identifying information for GR or TK is deposited in the appropriate public depository as part of the patent application process may also encourage industry compliance with access and benefit sharing where required by developing countries. Industry should not object to such a depository requirement since organizations like the ABIA have already endorsed their use. Further, these depositories are routinely used in the course of scientific research, making the “burden” of their use low.

Vanessa Lancaster and Richard Kraus

Additional Source:

Victor Rodriguez, Material transfer agreements: open science vs. proprietary claims, 23 Nature Biotechnology 489, 489 (2005).