From Mervyn Jacobson
Your article and related editorial correctly report that our company, Genetic Technologies (GTG) now holds certain patents relating to the use of non-coding DNA sequences in genetic diagnostics and genomics (18 May, p 3 and p4).
However, your implication that our success came “out of the blue” ignores our past 13 years of research, innovation, sacrifice and risk, the expenditure of millions of dollars on our research programme, our publications, our presence at international conferences and the mandatory widespread publication of our patent applications during the 1990s.
Like all other inventors, GTG was subjected to detailed scrutiny by numerous patent examiners in many jurisdictions, including the European Patent Office with its mandatory provisions for others to object. We also paid out some half a million dollars in patenting expenses.
Our company had the vision, the daring and the will in the late 1980s to pursue research in an area that others largely dismissed at that time – and we now deserve whatever success we achieved. Your comments imply it is wrong to be so successful. Surely well-established international patent conventions encourage precisely what we achieved. You also suggest that broad patents are intrinsically wrong. But with respect, how else do you reward broad inventions?
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It is true that GTG is “now demanding licensing fees” in relation to commercial applications of its various patented inventions. Surely this is the usual and customary way that small research companies everywhere attempt to generate revenues from past inventions. However, to suggest our patents might hinder research is incorrect. GTG is itself a research group, and we have a proud record of actively encouraging research by others.
Genetic Technologies, Melbourne
