Are Intellectual Property Rights Hampering Cancer Research?
In 1988, Harvard Medical School was awarded the first of three patents for creating the first transgenic mouse that would develop a human cancer. The mouse soon became known as the “OncoMouse” and was, at the time, considered pioneering technology by the U.S. Patent Office. The achievement occurred in the laboratory of Philip Leder, M.D., with funding from E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company; as a consequence, Harvard gave DuPont certain exclusive rights to the resulting intellectual property. The patents, issued between 1988 and 1999, cover the animal itself, the process of making it, and methods of using it.
