Patents for Life?

BRIAN: Major funding for BackStory is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

ED: From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is BackStory with the American Backstory hosts

BRIAN: Welcome to the show. I’m Brian Balogh, 20th century guy, and I’m here Ed Ayers.

ED: The 19th century guy.

BRIAN: And Peter Onuf’s with us.

PETER: The 18th century guy.

BRIAN: How would you like me to address you? As Professor Chakrabarty? Or Dr. Chakrabarty.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Either that or you can call Ananda. Ananda is my first name. It’s up to you.

BRIAN: No. I’m going with Dr. Chakrabarty.

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: I think anybody who invents life is entitled to it doctor.

[LAUGHTER]

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Well, if you can’t pronounce it, I have no problem.

ED: Back in the 1970s, Dr. Chakrabarty wound up at the center of an important question about what can and cannot be patented. He was working for General Electric at the time. And in his laboratory there, he had developed a bacterium that could help clean up oil spills.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Normally there is an oil spill, on the ocean a lake, or even a waterway. What happens is that there are various kinds of microorganisms that eat up only certain components of the oil. For a significant reduction in the various complements of the oil, you need a mixture of different types of bacteria.

So I said, why do I need all these bacteria?

ED: Why not just create one bacterium that can do all the work by itself?

BRIAN: So this is kind of like a bacteria on steroids that you created.

[LAUGHTER]

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Seems there is a negative connotation on bacteria on steroids.

[LAUGHTER]

BRIAN: All right. I retract that statement.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: I would defend my property and not really. It’s what you call a bacterium with a lot of wisdom.

[LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC]

BRIAN: I want to hone in on the word you used– property. You would defend your property.

PETER: Yeah.

BRIAN: As having a lot of wisdom. So my next question is, why did you patent this property?

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: So the normal procedure would be to patent the process of constructing such a microorganism. The only problem is this is a bacterium that you will release in an open environment where there is an oil spill.

BRIAN: Yes.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: So GE went there. They used a crop duster plane to throw in the bacteria over large areas of oil-contaminated lake or waterway.

Somebody like myself, who doesn’t work for GE any longer, would simply come and take a spoonful of those bacteria and grow them. And if the bacteria are not covered, you lose them just after one application.

PETER: Uh huh.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: So now you are beginning to see why we [? pick ?] that we should really ask for the bacterium to be patented.

BRIAN: Unfortunately for Dr. Chakrabarty, the patent office denied his application.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: They said bacteria are natural forms. You cannot patent a product of nature. So the argument was is something that’s living patentable?

ED: Chakrabarty wound up taking that question all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1980, the Court ruled in his favor. Even though the bacterium was a living thing, the Court said, it was not a product of nature. Chakrabarty had created it in his lab.

BRIAN: 33 years later, that decision is once again in the news. And that’s because the Supreme Court is once again considering thorny issues related to the patenting of life.

PETER: This time, the case concerns a company called Myriad Genetics and whether it should be able to patent a specific set of mutated human genes. Women who have these genes are extremely likely to develop breast and ovarian cancers.

Recently, actress Angelina Jolie made headlines when she announced that she had tested positive for one of the genes, leading her to undergo a preventive mastectomy.

BRIAN: That test, which we should point out is not cheap, can only be administered with the permission of Myriad. And that’s because of the patents it currently has. And so the question before the Court is, can living things that were isolated in lab– but not necessarily invented in that lab– can they be patented too?

ED: What can and cannot be considered intellectual property is a question with deep roots in America. And so today on the show, we’re going to trace those roots back through time. We’ve got stories about intellectual piracy in the era of pirate ships, about how confusing copyright became when movies came on the scene, and about the stand up routine of Phyllis Diller. That’s right. Phyllis Diller, here on BackStory.

[MUSIC]

PETER: Let’s return now to our conversation with Dr. Chakrabarty, the former GE scientist who patented a new type of bacterium back in the 1970s.

BRIAN: So Dr. Chakrabarty, it sounds like you’ve been on both sides of this story. You’ve worked for GE. And you’ve worked as a little professor, as you put it, at the University of Illinois.

[LAUGHTER]

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Right.

BRIAN: What wisdom can you share with us about the current patent system? Does it give too many advantages to the big guys now that you’re a little guy?

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Remember, simply because I’m a little guy doesn’t mean that I will remain little forever.

[LAUGHTER]

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: If I can use the wisdom of the forefathers of the US Constitution. They said these country is going to be a great country if this country can encourage innovation and help the innovators bring the products of their innovation to the marketplace.

I never forget that. I’m ever grateful to the framers of the US Constitution.

BRIAN: Well, we’re forever grateful to you for sharing this time with us.

PETER: Yeah. Thank you so much.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: Sure. It was really nice talking with you.

BRIAN: Bye bye.

ANANDA CHAKRABARTY: OK. Bye bye.