I certainly hope we have some crack lawyers on the job.
These patents’ treatment of race as a purportedly obvious social category in contrast to a presumedly non-obvious genetic category is particularly evident in Patent Application #20040229231 “Compositions and methods for inferring ancestry,”273 filed November 18, 2004 by Tony Frudakis of DNAPrint Genomics. DNAPrint describes itself as “a cutting edge company. We are concentrating our efforts in four distinct areas; Pharmacogenomics, Forensics, Genotyping, and Consumer Products. Our aim is to continue to research and develop novel products and services in each of these market areas and to be a leader in genomic-based technologies.”274 Frudakis is claiming a method of using ancestry informative DNA markers for inferring the ancestry of a given individual. Claim #3 specifies the ability to infer what it calls “Biogeographical ancestry.” 275 Later, in the Description section, the application defines “Biogeographical ancestry” as “the heritable component of ‘race’. . .” 276 What is striking about this particular use of race in relation to genetics is the way in which Frudakis distinguishes between social and purportedly genetic aspects of race. It is genetic race – the heritable portion – which Frudakis claims is revealed through analysis of ancestry informative markers that is marked out as a distinctive basis for the patent. And yet, while clearly that acknowledging non-heritable components do race exist, (and, indeed, necessarily must be relevant to the actual application and commercial utility of the technology), it makes no attempts to define them. Again, the implicit assumption appears to be that the asserted genetic components to race are non-obvious and/or novel, while the social aspects of race are too obvious to warrant further consideration.
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