Team:Utah State/Outreach/PolicyandPractices

Policy and Practices

Is our iGEM project patentable?

Intellectual property is a large concern of research and business ventures. A large portion of biological research is not just for deepening the well of knowledge, but in engineering ways to put that knowledge to work. With the prevalence and ease of current synthetic biology, even high school teams can compete in a race towards with a commercial enterprise towards a bio-manufactured product. The efforts of iGEM itself are to provide a more open-source toolkit for genetically engineered machines so that the freshmen of genetic engineering can learn from veteran’s labors. Intellectual rights protect the efforts of both parties, so infringement doesn’t spoil time and money spent on research and development. In the interest of our project goals, we have considered where our enzyme product holds ground within the limits of current US patents. This leads us to consider if our 2014 iGEM project is patentable.

The industry of Enzymes has a healthy impact in the global economy with an estimated market size of 4.4 billion in 2013, with plenty of growth projection (Grandview Research, Inc). Besides their role in the food industry, enzymes play a large part in the new formulas of detergents. With such a presence and potential for improved quality of life in household items, securing intellectual property for the constituents of modern detergent, or its application, has been well undertaken.

One patent stands out in our search because of its claims on the immobilization of enzymes used for cleaning fabric (US6030933 A). As demonstrated in our team’s product, produced enzymes are covalently bound to bio-plastic for use as a substitute or supplement to laundry detergent. This greatly overlaps in the claims made by Procter & Gamble, the patent authors.

"The present invention relates to detergent compositions comprising one or more enzymes which are immobilized by a covalent binding on an activated polymer. Such enzymes are preferably bound to the activated polymer via a spacer molecule. The enzymes are selected from a variety of enzymes including, for example, cellulases, hemicellulases, peroxidases, proteases, glucoamylases, amylases, lipases, cutinases, pectinases, reductases, oxidases, phenoloxidases, lipoxygenases, laccases, ligninases, pullulanases, xylanases, tannases, pentosanases, manlanases, β-glucanases, arabinosidases, and mixtures thereof. The polymer is selected from a variety of polymers. A preferred polymer for use in the present invention is polyethylene glycol."

From the abstract, further inspection of the list of claims to the polymer used is our only point of dissention. Our bio-plastic polymer is known as Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate or PHB. This polymer is made up of hydroxybutyrl-CoA molecules, a combination of two acetyl-CoA’s. Acetyl-CoA is a major component of metabolism in any organism that requires oxygen. In the eighth claim, the closest relative to our polymer claimed are polysaccharides. Polysaccharides are things like starch and glycogen, made up of glucose. Although glucose can be converted into acetyl-CoA, this is as close as the claim gets to our polymer. The classification of PHB is a polyester, meaning that an ester link is what connects each monomer in the chain. The claims made do not reserve any polyesters.

This patent is the closest we have found to our product intentions. Going forward, the interest and cooperation of Procter & Gamble would be a bridge to further implementation of an effective “stainbuster.”

References

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/enzymes-industry

http://www.google.com/patents/US6030933