Long before the human genome was fully sequenced, biotech companies were inundating the United States Patent and Trademark Office with applications for patents on bits and pieces of human genetic code. The companies have sought to control rights to specific genes or, sometimes, smaller segments of DNA with as-yet unknown functions. Such rights would limit the ability of other companies or researchers to profit from or even do research on those pieces of the genome. For now, tens of thousands of these claims sit in the Patent Office while legislators weigh arguments over what to do with them.

Concerns over the privatization of the genome fueled much of the animosity between the two major research camps that fought to be the first to decode the human genome. The government-led Human Genome Project published every letter of the genome on the Internet as they decoded it. Meanwhile, Celera, and other private companies filed thousands of patent applications for genes and gene fragments as they discovered them.

At issue for many researchers, including those at public institutions, is not so much the patenting of genes, but the terms of those patents. Many acknowledge that patent protection is key to gaining support from investors. Without some guarantee that they will have proprietary rights over the focus of their research, few companies are willing to put forth the millions of dollars required to further that research.

The problem, critics say, is that so many of the applications currently pending at the Patent Office seek patent protection that is overly broad. An example they point to is a patent that was granted to the firm Human Genome Sciences for the CCR-5 gene, which is important in AIDS research. The patent allows the company to charge other researchers wishing to study CCR-5 a royalty on any work they do with the gene. This type of protection, critics argue, greatly limits the amount of research that will be conducted on a potentially important gene.

As more cases like this emerge, a public already uncomfortable with the privatization of a decidedly public resource is pressuring the Patent Office to change its patent criteria in order to accommodate this quickly evolving scientific field.