Re: Biological data being used by an unpublished research paper is considered proprietary
If purely natural facts were considered copyrightable (! -
nothing IS copyrightable unless considered so) that would
mean no one were allowed to re-research nature.
Sequence a gene ? Nope, already sequenced. That's absurd.
However, this intuitive logic applies to the *pure*
"natural" fact *only*, that is, the, say, sequence of base
pairs of a gene "as such" and "as manifested by nature
itself in an organism".
Anything deviating from that (pure fact) may or may not be
considered copyrightable by some people because it is an
*alternate* (invented) *expression/manifestation* of said
fact. Some will go so far as to make copyrightable the
simplistic expression of a sequence on paper, with a pencil,
using characters. One may then not use that manifestation of
the fact -- but still re-research the fact itself and
re-manifest it for use. Some will also patent the *method*
of how the fact was manifested (sequenced, ...).
Nonetheless, the fact itself is re-manifestable by other
means without infringing.
Where it starts to get really slippery really fast is where
one, say, changes a single letter in a sequence. It may be
argued that that's not a naturally existing fact but an
invented fact. In such cases some will argue that such facts
would not exist without the invention and thus are
copyrightable.
It's an extremely fine line to walk. And greed, stupidity,
and fear will make worse of it.
Karsten
--
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E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346
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