Who is patenting whose genome?

An international project has developed a free and open public resource that will bring much-needed transparency to the murky and contentious world of gene patenting.

In a paper from Cambia and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) published in this week's Nature Biotechnology journal, researchers revealed that overworked patent offices are struggling to keep up with the rapid explosion in information and technology that genetic sequences represent.

"Apparently, many patent offices have no way of tracking genetic sequences disclosed in patents and currently do not provide them in machine-searchable format," said principal author Professor Osmat Jefferson, a QUT academic who leads an international team analysing biological patents for the open-access web resource, The Lens.

"This likely means patents are being granted for genes that are not 'newly discovered' at all, because the patent offices have no way of really knowing." Professor Jefferson said patenting the genes and proteins of humans and other living things had fallen under intense scrutiny since the US Supreme Court ruled in June this year that naturally occurring genetic material could not be patented."Gene patenting is an area where almost everyone has an opinion - passions run high but until now the evidence has been lacking," Professor Jefferson said.