The conventional wisdom is that intellectual property is generally a good thing, although it can lapse into the absurd. Shakespeare is in the public domain, but just about anything printed in the last 100 years is not, even though the vast majority of it is long out-of-print. In the present tense, IP laws are intended to protect innovation and allow inventors to profit from their ideas. This is thought to drive innovation, and innovation ultimately benefits everyone. However, I've come across two examples recently where IP laws, while perhaps protecting innovation, nonetheless are not working in the public interest.
The first example comes from everyone's favorite evil corporation: Microsoft. Gates and company had some ideas about how to stop e-mail spam. They joined forces with AOL and maybe even Yahoo, and presented their ideas to IEEE, the body that approves standards for electronics and communications. IEEE considered the idea only briefly because they learned that Microsoft intended to file for a patent on their idea. IEEE can't very well make a patented process into a standard because that would force everyone to pay a licensing fee to the patent-holder. So someday we may be free from spam, but thanks to Microsoft, that day won't come soon.
While spam is certainly annoying, the second example is much more serious. A technology called DNA microarrays allows researchers to examine how genes are turned on or off in a cell across its whole genome. It's a very powerful tool and has the potential to give us great insights into the biology of cancer. In fact, there have probably been enough microarray experiments conducted on human DNA to date to be a tremendous boon to cancer researchers. Unfortunately, it's locked away in the intellectual property of dozens of companies. Each has just a piece of the puzzle, which is useful but not nearly as powerful as the whole picture.
To be fair, microarray experiments are expensive. The companies that do this work went into it with the intention of making a buck in addition to curing disease. As more or less a believer in capitalism, I think that's their right. It's just a shame that every once in a while, we can't put aside our materialism for a greater good. On the other hand, without the lure of riches, the microarray data wouldn't exist in the first place.
Wired’s current coverstory is about so-called “superorganic” foods, which the article sells as the next generation of genetically modified (GM) foods, frequently referred to as “frankenfoods.” The current crop of GM foods has genes inserted from other species to give them improved functions, such as drought resistance or added nutrients. Superorganics do this one better and activate dormant genes or insert genes from different strains of the same species.
First off, let’s not mince words the way Wired does. Superorganics are still genetically modified. But so are dogs and wheat. Dogs and wheat are the product of controlled breeding whereas “frankenfoods” come out of a lab and, more importantly, contain genes from other species, usually bacteria or some equally foreign donor. Superorganics get sold in the article as being equivalent to the breeding process, just one that has been accelerated by lab techniques. The fact of the matter is that superorganics probably spend more time in the lab than GM foods and achieve results that no breeder in a thousand years could do.
That’s not to knock them at all. Much to the contrary, I think these “superorganic” foods are the way to go. They solve two of the biggest problems of GM foods. The scariest is the idea of “genetic pollution,” which can be thought of as artificially changing the wild gene pool. If a gene that produces beta-carotene is transferred from a GM crop to some native species, who knows what the effect of that would be. Or if a crop contains a bacterial gene that makes it naturally resistant to insects, we run the risk of breeding hardier insects the same way that antibiotics have resulted in many strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. By using only genes native to a species, superorganics avoid this problem. Indeed, many strains currently under development simply reactivate genes that have been shut off by generations of controlled breeding.
The second problem is intellectual property rights. Most of the GM strains were developed by Monsanto, and they have patents on not only the crops but the techniques used to create them. This makes it difficult to feed hungry people in developing countries. Superorganics instead rely on public domain techniques that are free from intellectual property issues.
Superorganics also overcome a number of other issues associated with both modern and traditional techniques of genetic modification. Inbreeding, for example, is a big problem for dog breeders but not superorganics. I’ve long thought that the solution to humanity’s current food crisis — malnutrition is responsible for something like 30 million cases of blindness annually — lies in modifying our crops to better accommodate our needs. As the population grows over the coming century, the food crisis will only worsen. Superorganic foods are part of the solution.
