<story><title>Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/gene-patents-probably-dead-worldwide-following-australian-court-decision/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ekianjo</author><text>If we could kill patents altogether that would be a much nicer step. Patents are an invention from another Era and make absolutely no sense nowadays, and we see them constantly abused to make our lives worse in the end.</text></item><item><author>mirimir</author><text>Now, if we can just agree that natural products and traditional cures can&amp;#x27;t be patented. India has been fighting hard for that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mirimir</author><text>I tend to agree with Cyph0n that patents can promote innovation. But &amp;quot;prior art&amp;quot; ought to be defined sanely. If something has been well known in India for thousands of years, how can some multinational patent it? How can some chemical that occurs in nature be patented? And then there&amp;#x27;s the whole universe of stuff that&amp;#x27;s different by one atom over there, and so deemed patentable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gene patents probably dead worldwide following Australian court decision</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/gene-patents-probably-dead-worldwide-following-australian-court-decision/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ekianjo</author><text>If we could kill patents altogether that would be a much nicer step. Patents are an invention from another Era and make absolutely no sense nowadays, and we see them constantly abused to make our lives worse in the end.</text></item><item><author>mirimir</author><text>Now, if we can just agree that natural products and traditional cures can&amp;#x27;t be patented. India has been fighting hard for that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JulianMorrison</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think they made any sense from the get go, not even in the steam age.&lt;p&gt;In general, the first implementation of a good idea was a bad one, of limited use, not a well refined concept. And then the patent-holder sat on the patent until it expired, and then - finally - the whatever-it-was became a vital and widely used commodity as creativity started to be applied.&lt;p&gt;So all it did was slow the pace of change.</text></comment>