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The cover story on oligonucleotides featured a box on intellectual property, "Antisense Firms Must Negotiate a Patent Minefield" (C&EN, April 17, page 16). While the minefield is described as "a tangled web of cross-licensing agreements," the situation is actually simple.
In order to encourage scientists or inventors to divulge their results, the inventor of a new, useful, nonobvious thing or process is given the exclusive rights to make, use, or sell this invention for 20 years. This bundle of rights is what we call intellectual property (IP). Just like conventional property, the inventor can sell, gift, or otherwise transfer the IP. These transfers constitute "the complicated web of IP ownership" described for the antisense industry.
As inventors, antisense firms are given the rights to make, use, or sell their technology. Competing firms may want to use the technology but they first must acquire the right to do so from the owner of the IP. They can purchase the right to use the technology with a license, much like a person might buy a license to use a piece of conventional property, such as a pool or a golf course.
Clearly, the rights to make, use, or sell technology are valuable, and just like conventional property, they can be sold outright. In the article, Idera Pharmaceuticals is reputed to invest heavily in these rights. This simply means that when a firm wants to use technology to which Idera holds the rights, they must deal with Idera, who, as owner of the IP, has the greatest incentive to allocate the rights to those who will use the technology to create the most value in the marketplace.
Obviously, the system of incentives created by the patent system has flaws. However, the situation described in the article does not describe a failure of this system. While the story spares no use of legal terminology to paint a picture of science being limited by legal restrictions, we see no tangled web.
June 5, page 28: Compound (2) shown in the top reaction schemewas built from 2-bromo-5-fluorobenzonitrile, not 2-bromo-4-fluorobenzonitrile.
June 5, page 33: Allovectin-7was incorrectly identified as a plasma-lipid complex. It is a plasmid-lipidcomplex.
Andrew R. Chadeayne
Peter T. Wolczanski
Ithaca, N.Y.
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