Tilghman chairs patent council

A committee co-chaired by President Tilghman issued a report on intellectual property issues last week that made recommendations on how policymakers can protect property rights without impeding advances in science.

The report, issued by the National Academies' National Research Council, focused on research in genomics and proteomics, two fields that have sparked significant scientific interest and could lead to important innovations in fighting disease.

In a phone interview Monday, Tilghman emphasized the University's commitment to sharing academic work among scholars and researchers.

"Princeton has a long and venerable tradition of supporting the freedom of information-sharing," Tilghman said. "We stand very much on the side ... of believing that the role of universities is conducting independent research."

Because of legal ambiguities and the rapidly changing scientific frontier, however, there exists what Tilghman calls a "perfect storm" for potential impediments to free scientific inquiry.

Biological patent regulations were written when molecular biologists typically focused on a single organic compound, such as a protein or a gene. The recent advances in the field, however, have allowed researchers to examine thousand of genes or proteins simultaneously.

"You can imagine what kind of chaos would ensue," Tilghman said, warning of the legal quagmire that could result if researchers were required to consider the intellectual property rules surrounding each compound.

Furthermore, according to Tilghman, research on patented inventions is not currently protected under the law, as many academics assume it is.

In what Tilghman called the report's "most important recommendation," the committee urged Congress to adopt a "statutory research exemption law" that would protect new research from legal retaliation.

Robert Waterston, a committee member and a genome sciences professor at the University of Washington, said he supports the passage of an exemption law for research involving patented information.

In the context of such a law, Waterston called for distinctions between research "on" licensed information and research that works "with" these advances. He explained that when using patented enzymes, for instance, research that only uses such an enzyme would not be protected under such a law, but research seeking to improve it would.

Tilghman co-chaired the committee with Roderick McKelvie, a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based Covington and Burling law firm. His legal experience, coupled with Tilghman's background in molecular biology, provided the study with expertise in the legal and scientific areas of the controversy.

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"Avoiding a conflict between open dissemination and access to scientific discoveries and the protection of inventors' rights is critical to furthering scientific progress and enhancing human health," Tilghman and McKelvie wrote in the report's preface.

The study was prompted by a 2003 request by the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the patenting of biological information, including gene sequences and protein structures.

Though the study warned of potential legal problems in the future, it did not report great obstacles to current scientific research.

"For the time being, it appears that access to patented inventions or information inputs into biomedical research rarely imposes a significant burden for biomedical researchers," the report states.

A National Academies press release echoed Tilghman's concern about the future of genomics and proteomics research.

"Intellectual property (IP) restrictions rarely impose significant burdens on biomedical research, but there are reasons to be apprehensive about their future impact on scientific advances in this area," the press release states.

The committee made several other recommendations to support free scientific inquiry while observing intellectual property rights.

It called for a review of the methods through which patents for biological advances are awarded and for the extension of the Bermuda Rules, which govern the free exchange of information gained from the Human Genome Project among all NIH-funded studies.