So I’m reading Ultimate Spider-Man #61 yesterday, and I did a little “stay good” cheer for Peter Parker’s friend Dr. Conners, who decided to ASK Peter for permission before studying his blood sample. All very ethical (but hardly standards-compliant, as NIH procedures require documentation—umm, nevermind.)
The point is, this morning it suddenly struck me that Dr. Conners will be in big trouble if anyone ever finds out from whence his sample sprang, because the cause of Peter Parker’s powers in the Ultimate universe is a bite from a spider treated with Osbourne Industries wonder-drug “Oz”, which is doubtless covered by several patents and probably a trade secret!
That’s when I realized that working at a research university warps your brain. And that I’m a big geek, but that much was not news.
Comments
My blood and the DMCA
I’m currently on prescription medication that’s protected by one or more patents. Does this mean that my blood is protected by the DMCA? If someone owns a patent on something in my bloodstream, can they sue me for giving out free samples of my blood?
Not that I give out free blood samples or anything. That’s weird.
Re: My blood and the DMCA
Noooo…it does mean that if someone were to study your blood in order to find a cure to X (where X is whatever you have) and they isolated the patented molecule, and used it to cure X, they would be in big trouble.
In Peter’s case, it isn’t so much a cure to any one thing, although for some unknowable reason Dr. Conners mentioned a cure for cancer (in the Ultimate Universe, Peter’s pop was trying to find a cure for cancer before he died in a car crash, so it’s kind of a red button for the boy.). Still, if he studies Peter’s blood and finds something that is a result of Oz, he may be in trouble.
Re: My blood and the DMCA
Oh, and Peter wasn’t giving out free blood samples, either. MJ gets freaked out by suturing wounds, and Dr. Conners knows his secret identity ANYWAYS, so….
Oh, and to address the suing you question…no, I doubt you’d be held at fault under any situation, and never by the patent-holder. I could imagine a situation where the people studying your blood would sue you for wasting their time, if you hadn’t been honest about what meds you were on, but it’s very far-fetched.
Re: My blood and the DMCA
Patents are a very different animal from trade secrets. Patents are published.
The deal the inventor makes is that he fully discloses the implementation of his new invention. In return, the government gives him 14-20 years of patent protection so that he can market the invention and make money off of it with a short-term monopoly.
Anyone can read the patent, and anyone can follow the patent for reasearch purposes. So someone could read the patent for the drugs you take, syntesize those drugs, and use them in research to determine whether they’re good for anything else. They can even patent the new use for the drug themselves (in most cases), but they cannot market the new procedure without licensing the original patent or waiting for it to expire.
to be fair
To be fair to yourself, it’s not like you just pulled that mitigation out of nowhere. Green Goblin pretty much told peter just that maybe a dozen comics prior, so it’s just your selective memory, not your overeducatedness. Sorry. : )
-E
P.S. I think that two of your friends that you introduced got together 4 years later deserves its own blog.
Re: to be fair
Eeep! Which mitigation?
I admit, I reread my DC books all the time. So, something that happened 12 ishes ago in Robin? All over it, man. The little boy was only invulnerable when he was near the little girl, and they were aliens. But Spidey? Damned if I remember that far back.
Yes, I suppose it does deserve its own entry. But I was feeling frivolous, not mushy, when I articled today :p
Re: to be fair
I went back and reread, and it was more like 36 comics prior, which makes me feel better…and since it was in the context of “you belong to me” (a context also including “you are my true son” and hallucinations telling him about circles of blood and dark) I think I can be forgiven for filing it under ‘Green Goblin Crazy’ not ‘Actual Intellectual Property Claim’ in my brain :)