Study On Intellectual Property Protection In Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the one of the most important research fields in life science, which plays an inestimable role on the biological theoretical and applied fields of the discovery and application of new medicines, the treatment of diseases, the agriculture, biological evolution, genomics and proteomics and so on. To study Bioinformatics, many countries have been expending much effort including manpower, materials and financial resources. However, the problems of unclear protection pattern and right of the intellectual property on Bioinformatics research result in the national and enterprise funds to be difficultly returned, which constrains the rapid development of Bioinformatics.Based on the analyzing the characteristics of Bioinformatics, together with the theory of intellectual property and the current situations on intellectual property right (IPR) protection at domestic and abroad, the results of a comprehensive analysis and research on Bioinformatics IPR protection have been reported in this thesis and the following conclusions are drawn out by theoretical and empirical studies.Firstly, by analyzing characteristics of Bioinformatics database and IPR protection current pattern, the primary and secondary database of Bioinformatics should be protected in two different strategies. The suggestions are proposed that the secondary database should be protected by the IPR and the primary database should be opened to the public. The various strategies taken by the primary and secondary database managers, end-users and the government have been discussed in this thesis, using the model of conflict analysis. The results showed that the governments should give a certain amount of subsidy to the database developers especial for the primary database developers if the users of the database who are the main scientific research customers are price-sensitive. However, if the users of the database are price non-sensitive users, Bioinformatics database can also work well even the governments don't offer any financial subsidies. The further suggestion has been put forward in the thesis that the government should take different financial subsidies according to the different stages of the data diffusion after the analysis on the process of Bioinformatics data diffusion by transmission model.Secondly, the mode of IPR protection on the biochip is proposed and the more feasible mode of IPR protection on the biochip is to establish biochip patent pools based on industry de facto standard. Establishing the biochip patent pools can not only solve frequent patent disputes but also promote the development on biochip technology and industry.Thirdly, the mode of IPR protection on proteomics is discussed in this thesis. IPR protection on three-dimensional structures of proteins is studied mainly and the mode of IPR protection on data of three-dimensional structures of proteins is suggested. According to the research, the data of three-dimensional structure of proteins is more difficult to be patented and also can't be protected by the copyright law. Based on the characteristic of the protein three-dimensional structure, the special law for the protection on the data of protein three-dimensional structure is suggested and the contents of it are given. The feasibility on it is also analyzed in the thesis.Finally, China's IPR protection on Bioinformatics is analyzed in the thesis. According to the current condition of China's IPR protection and the development on Bioinformatics, the strategy of it is discussed.