> The law’s original intent was to patent mature discoveries, things like a genetically modified crop, or biofuel-farting yeast. Over the years, however, universities started filing patents further upstream—on everything from protein structures to bits of DNA. This frenzy of molecule-grabbing can actually work counter to Bayh-Doyle, locking up promising discoveries that don’t need help getting commercialized. “Crispr totally epitomizes that,” says Michael Eisen, a Berkeley biophysicist and long-time advocate of open science. “Everybody in the universe is chomping at the bit to use it. But patents are an obstacle to that happening right now.”

I recently read "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell and each chapter highlighting an economic concept included examples of government policy relevant to the subject. Such as rent control, price controls in agriculture, zoning, industry licensing, etc. Almost all of them had similar unintended side effects as seen here (ie, rent controls intended to reduce rent prices resulted in a shortage of affordable housing for poor people in NYC, Toronto, etc). They almost always create an imbalance where the negative side effects largely outweigh the intended benefits.

I'm not sure leaving such highly technical debates, such as whether or not you can patent a low level protein, should be left for random courts to decide.

How do we solve such a prevalent problem? Should the legislation then become more specific to make sure it has it's intended purpose? Or would that ultimately lead to endless complexity in law? Creating loopholes and increased difficulty/cost to implement?

The easy answer that some people take is that government should largely not be involved in this type of stuff but I'm always interested in exploring alternatives. But otherwise this stuff is largely ignored outside of the usual generic complaints about regulations coming from business groups each year, yet it continues to persist as a black/white issue in politics.

CRISPR is such a critical and important technology, it'd be a shame if it was held back by unintentional interpretations of law.