A Patent War on iPS: One Researcher’s View

As the California stem cell agency
pushes ever more aggressively to turn research into cures, the second
largest share of its awards, in terms of numbers of grants, has gone
to efforts involving induced pluripotent cells, also known as
reprogrammed adult cells.

“All the talk and the slew of
publications about potentially using iPS cells to develop therapies
to help patients is exciting in theory, but unfortunately the reality
is that it is not entirely clear if most researchers are, from a
legal standpoint, even allowed to develop and commercialize iPS
cell-based therapies at all.

“The patent landscape for iPS cells
is complicated to put it mildly. A
Google patent search for “induced pluripotent stem cells”
produced almost 200,000 results.

“A search for “cellular
reprogramming produced more than 1,000
results.
I’m not sure all of these results are
really separate patents, but still….that’s a big complicated
mess.…..

“It is no exaggeration to say
there are likely dozens of institutions around the world wanting to
commercialize iPS cell-based products.

“Will they all have to pay expensive
licensing fees or end up in court?
…or will the patent holders
voluntarily and freely allow others to commercialize iPS cell-based
medical treatments?

“I don’t think so.

“This could get really messy.”

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/uqpFc/~3/ZX0PoUag-pE/a-patent-war-on-ips-one-researchers-view.html