The trouble with patenting:Patents
give people, or companies, exclusive rights to manufacture and sell a new invention
for up to 20 years. Only after this time can anyone else make the same thing
and sell it. The spirit of patenting has changed in recent years as corporations
have managed to get rights to patent discoveries rather than just inventions.
In 1987, the United States allowed patents on living
for the first time. After that, the floodgates opened as each company scrambled
to patent as many genes, either discovered or altered, as possible. The idea
behind this was, as ever, to prevent your competitors from making money out
of your work. Some scientists who had been working on GE techniques in public
labs funded by public money realised they could make lots more money if they
founded new GE companies and worked for them instead, taking their knowledge
of genes with them and applying for as many patents as possible on the bits
of genes they knew about.
Patenting
and competition: Through a new system of what are called called
'intellectual property rights' (developed by the World Trade Organisation which
regulates trade around the world), patents allow companies to own the new forms
of plants and animals they make. This means they can charge farmers all over
the world for the use of 'their' creations. Some people, not surprisingly, think
patenting is a brilliant idea. The companies say they need the money they get
from patents to pay for more research and development. Others
think it is a very bad idea indeed when it comes to being able to patent living
things. I certainly don't want to be patented. 
And
there's worse: a new form of piracy which patenting makes possible called .
I just don't understand why people have to compete all the time. Why can't they co-operate? Why can't they share instead of wanting to grab everything for themselves? When people compete, someone (usually lots of 
people) loses out. There's only one winner. When (if?) people become wiser and learn to co-operate, everyone wins. That's what I think. But then I'm only a simple penguin.
This is a complicated business but you can find out more about how GE and patenting are so tightly linked in oneworld.net's guide to genetic engineering.