The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Microsoft goes Darwinian with evolutionary tree patent

Multiplication tables next

Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime

A Microsoft patent application has evolutionary biologists worried Redmond could claim standard techniques used by scientists to organize how animals are related through time.

The patent application, which came to light in the August edition of Science, claims invention of methods for mapping biological data to an evolutionary tree. It includes methods for counting evolutionary events as well as grouping evolutionary relatedness from biomolecules.

The patent application was filed July 23, 2007 and credited to Stuart Ozer.

"This patent is written in such a broad language that it appears to swallow up any activity that involves understanding biodiversity though phylogenetics," said William Piel, a phylogeneticst at Yale University quoted in the article.

Piel claims the basic techniques are derived from as far back as when Charles Darwin sketched the first evolutionary tree, and today are used by hundreds of biological systematics software packages. "Microsoft might as well patent the multiplication tables," Piel said.

Because such a patent could potentially hobble an entire scientific field, evolutionary biologists will surely be keeping a closer eye on Microsoft's newfound interest in gene-splicing software. ®

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything

Latest Comments

Patent on the wheel

@Graham Marsden

"What next? A patent on the wheel...?"

Too late:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html

0
0

@ SteveK about patenting the US patent system

"Has anyone actually patented the US patent service?"

Patent are usually filed for things that could be somehow useful, even remotely so. I think the "US patent service" stands totally clear to this regard....

0
0

256**56k?

I dont know many people who use the full alphabet let alone every bizarre character available!

Yes it would be a lot of calculation time on silicon - and even longer on a windows machine but not everyone is stuck in the stone age.

And as for AC 23/8/09 20:09 I had a friend shot dead by the IRA. The bullet was paid for on the streets of NT a few yards from ground zero. The terrorist still walks free in the US. Most IRA bombs were made of Libyan Semtex paid in $ collected in the US.

The UK have tried to extradite convicted IRA terrorist for many years - we got ONE back recently! Why, did the US finally accede to having terrorists face justice?

No such luck - he committed the much much greater crime of having his work permit expire.

Our law may be laughable but yours ...

0
0

More from The Register

Boffins find evidence Atlantic Ocean has started closing
'Embryonic subduction zone' that flattened Lisbon headed for Blighty
New material enables 1,000-meter super-skyscrapers
Before you read on, see if you can guess how the new stuff will be used
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
You've seen the Large Hadron Collider. Now comes the HUGE Hadron Collider
International Linear Collider ready to rock and roll
Headbangers have a gas, gas, gas in mosh pits
Boffins say heavy metal crowds behave like The Vapours
Hubble spies unlikely planet being born in hostile neighborhood
Hoovering a cloud of sand 7.5 billion miles from a tiny star
 breaking news
Jaguar to open new car-making factory in Blighty (virtually)
Britain still makes stuff, it's just not real any more...
 breaking news
China's second woman 'naut blasts off for coupling in HEAVEN
Wang and pals test the cosmic waters for Chinese space station
Scientists investigate 'dark lightning' threat to aircraft passengers
One stormy flight could give lifetime radiation dose
 breaking news
Chinese 'nauts prep for next coupling in Heaven, clear way for new station
Second woman taikonaut and pals test tech for China's own orbiting platform