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Bleeding Edge

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Aug 16th 2001 11:18am





Copyright Your DNA

from the protect-against-unlawful-cloning dept

Worried that someone might try to clone you against your wishes? Okay, me neither, but one company is betting that people more famous than you or I will be concerned about such things. Thus, they're offering folks a chance to copyright their DNA in an attempt to give them more legal standing should anyone try to make a clone of them - against their wishes. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase intellectual property. What about someone who copyrights their DNA and then has a kid? Has the kid violated the copyright by sharing a portion of the parent's DNA? Identical twins? Who owns the rights? And, of course, as the article points out, what happens after you win a case against someone who cloned you?

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Scam?

    identicon
    Ed, Aug 16th, 2001 @ 3:38pm

    Copyrights are supposed to be reserved for creative works. I believe that past cases have held that certain works like telephone white pages are not copyrightable because there's no creativity involved in compiling them. It seems to me that copyrighting one's DNA would fail for this reason alone. Also, exactly what form is supposed to be copyrighted here? One's DNA sequence? Hasn't it taken years to sequence one individual's DNA? Or could I just smear a tissue sample on a piece of paper and put a copyright notice on it? If so, what do I need this company for?

    In summary, this has as much chance of success as the guy who wants to light up the moon with laser pointers.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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