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Part of the benefit of making a moral argument (rather than a legal one), is I can avoid giving an exact test for what should and shouldn't be patentable. Yes,
by gpm 5y ago
Part of the benefit of making a moral argument (rather than a legal one), is I can avoid giving an exact test for what should and shouldn't be patentable.
Yes, I think there should be some minimal "unit of invention", and that in this case it's pretty clearly the vaccine as a whole. "Part of the vaccine" isn't of benefit to society, so disclosing how to make that isn't meeting your end of the bargain.
Yes, I also think that there are probably other cases where a single product has two unrelated subsystems, and it makes sense you could have patents on both of them. For example in a cell phone, a different patent on the antenna and the barometer would make sense, since they really haven nothing to do with eachother and disclosure of each individually benefits society.
- Arnt 5y agoIs that clear? The contrapositive of that is that Moderna invented nothing in its first nine or ten years — none of the research that led to this vaccine counts as a patentable invention.
- gpm 5y agoMorally, yes. A patent needs to have utility for the quid quo pro to make any sense, it's the end products that have utility. Patenting necessary intermediates without disclosing the end products serves to retard innovation by everyone else without giving them the reward once the temporary monopoly expires. Legally, I would not be at all surprised to find out you were right.
- Arnt 5y agoNot clear to me what end product they should have disclosed in March 2017.