April 4, 1996. Copyright, 1996, Graphic News. All rights reserved

JAPANESE SNAP UP HUMAN GENOME
By Laura Spinney, Science Editor

LONDON, April 4, Graphic News- Japan leads the world in private ownership of patented human DNA sequences, according to scientists at the University of Sussex. Three quarters of the patents are owned by industry, and nearly half of those belong to Japanese companies. The rest are divided equally between companies from America and the rest of the world.

Patenting of human genes is highly controversial, and information on who owns which DNA sequence has so far been scarce.The impetus for patenting has been provided largely by drug companies who argue that it is necessary if they are to obtain intellectual property rights on therapeutic drugs or diagnostic tools developed with DNA sequence information produced by the Human Genome Project.

In a letter to this weekÕs ÔNatureÕ, Sandy Thomas of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex and his colleagues report on the first in-depth study of human DNA sequence patent ownership. They claim that most of the 1,175 patents granted between 1981 and 1995 were issued by the European Patent Office (EPO), the U.S. Patent Office (USPO) and the Japanese Patent Office, with the EPO issuing over half the worldwide total. Yet 70 per cent of EPO patents have gone to America and Japan. Only 17 per cent of all the patents have been issued in the public sector, and most of those are American. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, for example, owns 28.

Europe is trailing behind in ownership of human DNA patents, a fact that the researchers blame on the lack of collaboration between academics and industry in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. According to Julie Sheppard of the UK-based Genetics Forum, the proportion of basic research published by British scientists is much higher than the proportion of patents that are British-owned. ÔBritish taxpayers should be concerned that their money is funding research that is later patented by the Americans or the Japanese,Õ says Sheppard.

Sources: Nature, Genetics Forum