Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
A California-based consumer group and a stem cell scientist took action Tuesday to overturn the landmark patents on human embryonic stem cells held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, claiming that the patents hinder research, drive scientists overseas and waste taxpayer money.
The groups say their action asks the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to revoke three patents that give all rights to human embryonic stem cells to WARF, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s patenting and licensing arm.
“It’s absolutely absurd that one person or organization could own the rights to life itself,” said John Simpson of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.
Joining the foundation in its challenge were the Public Patent Foundation and Jeanne Loring, a stem cell scientist at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, a California non-profit firm.
As the U.S. Senate approved legislation Tuesday that would lift prohibitions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, the parties held a news conference outlining their challenge to the research foundation’s patents.
“These patents are impeding our research,” Loring said. “They are more important than what is going on in the Senate right now. They are making scientists go overseas.”
WARF officials declined to be interviewed about the challenge. In a prepared statement, Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of WARF, said he was confident that its patents were valid. He said the challenge was politically and financially motivated.
“WARF stem cell patents do not inhibit research,” he said. “They support and encourage it.”
He said WARF‘s WiCell Research Institute has provided free licenses and cells to 324 research groups, and that those licenses allow researchers to patent and publish any discoveries they make.
But the patents could factor into the $3 billion stem cell research initiative approved last year by voters in California. Officials there said last year that WARF‘s claim to broad commercial rights “complicates” the state’s ability to make research grants to for-profit concerns.
In addition, any commercial stem cell therapies developed by other researchers would be subject to WARF financial demands, the groups said.
They said the patents stymie research by allowing WARF to require researchers, including those who receive taxpayer-supported grants, to pay royalties and obtain approval for initiating stem cell research.
As a result, researchers and research dollars are being moved overseas, they said.
The groups said that no other country in the world recognizes the patents.
The groups said the patents were issued in 1998, 2001 and 2006 and involve the work of UW stem cell scientist James Thomson, who in 1998 was credited as being the first person to isolate and grow human embryonic stem cells. These basic cells can differentiate into any type of cell in the body.
The groups say the patents should not have been granted because earlier work by other researchers made the derivation of human embryonic stem cells “obvious and therefore unpatentable.”
“The real invention was made 25 years ago when embryonic stem cells were first discovered, and the scientists who discovered them didn’t expect a payoff,” Loring said.
Daniel Ravicher, executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, said the WARF patents have not been challenged before. He said the patent office should decide within three months whether a challenge to the patents is warranted. After that, a decision on the challenge could take 18 months to 10 years.
