Commerce Dept patents (Was: Patenting indigenous peoples' cells)

On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> wrote:
>
> And so on, and so on, and so on. It is unfortunate that the author
> of the article chose to misrepresent what occured -- there are plenty
> of serious and real issues surrounding genetic research without
> having to make up fictional ones.

Here's one; actually, a digression.

According to the site at that URL, "... he came across [a patent] application filed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce...." (I know that Dan identified a number of reasons to doubt the veracity of the article; however, for the sake of argument, let's take this statement as true; to the extent that it might not be true, consider this a hypothetical.)

Now, there's nothing that prevents the U.S. government, or a particular department of the executive branch of that government, from obtaining a patent.

But the PTO is a division of the Commerce Department; I see a conflict of interest here. What procedural safeguards exist to keep the PTO from providing special treatment for patents originating from its own Department?

The article further states:

     ... U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown stated, "Under our laws, as
     well as those of many countries, subject matter relating to human
     cells is patentable and there is no provision for considerations
     relating to the source of the cells that may be the subject of a
     patent application." 

Was Brown speaking in his capacity as head of the Department that is applying for the patent, or as head of the Department that includes the Office that decides whether to award the patent?

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