In the United States patents are held for approximately 2000 human genes, including several cancer-inducing genes like BRCA. In the article a judge considers these patents invalid, on the account that genes are biologically occurring phenomena. What is interesting about this case is that an argument given by a member of the supreme court was: “sometimes too much patent protection can impede rather than ‘promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,’ the constitutional objective of patent and copyright protection”.
If a moral court had to make a decision whether upholding patents for important genes is morally right, while the same genes can possibly cure many people, it faces a moral hard case suited for a utilitarian point of view. An argument to annul the patents is that these genes, when used by a number of other institutes, can create a medicine that cures cancer much more efficiently than in the case of the genes being used just by the patent holding company, especially if that company isn’t using the patent at the moment or has different purposes with the gene. Utilitarianists would value not only the increased number of companies able to profit of the gene, but also the number of cured patients and evaded deaths in the near future, giving an astonishing value to this moral argument.
However, when we look at the counterargument, banning patents would limit the incentive for private research greatly. Companies would avoid further basic genetic research since in the event of a major invention the company is not likely to gain any profit. And since we can state that this kind of research is going to lead to major break-troughs considering health and medicine in the far future, this outcome will lead to even more overall utility. This means from a utilitarian perspective it is morally right to grant patents on naturally occurring phenomena like genes.
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