Copyrighting your DNA?

Oh, cool! Do you have any other snippets of yesteryear to dredge up?

What would *I* do? I'd hire an expensive, grand-standing attorney, call a press conference and have people take pictures of him filing the federal lawsuit against that company for violation of numerous federal laws.

For starters, copyright has absolutely nothing to do with DNA. Copyright refers to protection of your original works of creative authorship. It does not cover any "discovery" or any system or process for using that discovery. 17 USC § 102(b).

Second, if you meant "patents", the law has NEVER allowed a patent for anything that is not actually an invention by a human. Your naturally occurring DNA is not an invention and nobody can patent your DNA. Ever.

Even if you were a PLANT and someone patented you, the patent only pertains to duplication by NON-sexual distribution of your DNA, i.e., by grafting, and not to your seeds or other sexual parts.

DNA is not copyrightable. *Maybe* the sequence of your genes printed out on paper would be copyrightable, but I have doubts. Even if you did have a copyright in the text file that spells out your DNA, it is not at all certain that cloning that DNA would infringe the copyright. Also, who is the "author" of your DNA? Your parents?

There's a reason this company does not include copyright registration as part of their services. The reason is most likely they've never gotten one through. And while you don't need a copyright registration, no court or law enforcement agency in the US will help enforce your copyright without one.

Apparently my answer gets people all hopping mad inside. Here's a law review article if you want to read further arguments about the copyrightability of DNA, both pro and con. http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

Did you actually have a question?

The link doesn't mention that companies are trying to copyright your DNA. It mentions a company that is offering to copyright it for you, for a large fee, and not even directly copyright it, but essentially give you a plaque that says it's copyrighted.

An excellent review of the law on gene patenting: http://genethics.ca/personal/papers/HistoryPatent....

me? i would go to the streets and protest against the government that allowed corporations to copyright my DNA.

You (the being) are in possession of, and inhabiting a self replicating vehicle manufactured by your parents. They didnt own the blueprints and neither do you. You own a copy of the blueprints, but they are polymorphic and constantly being rewritten (by you and external forces).