Changing Australian law to explicitly rule out patents being applied to human genes would drive research jobs and investment dollars offshore, an expert panel says.
The potential change, now under consideration by a Senate inquiry, also threatened to "bring the Australian biotech industry to its knees", says the Institute of Patent and Trademark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA), which staged the panel event on Thursday.
"It would seriously affect the biotechnology industry in that it would be difficult to attract investment in research that has commercial opportunities if it couldn't be protected," IPTA councillor Trevor Davies said while at the event in Sydney.
"(And) if biological materials couldn't be patented ... there is a likelihood that important advances in medicine would not actually be released in Australia because there wouldn't be patent protection."
Patent law was as critical to a successful biotech sector as mining leases were to the mining sector, said the panel, which included prominent patent lawyers, a biotech entrepreneur and academics.
They also said the typical cost of transforming a promising field of research into a market-ready medical product - like a life-saving genetic test - was about a billion dollars.
Pharmaceutical or biotech companies would not fund this work in Australia without sufficient patent protections in place, they said.
"If we ban the patenting of genes ... we will remove the incentive for people to invest," said panel member and University of Melbourne intellectual property professor Andrew Christie.
"I'm worried that we won't then have the genetic tests of the future, the genetic therapies that I want us to have."
Prof Christie also said it was wrong for opponents of gene patenting to say the process was about handing corporations the power to "own" or control parts of the human body.
Existing laws did not allow a patent to be applied to a gene simply because it was found to be present in the body, he said.
Instead, the gene had to be capable of being isolated from the body, or created artificially, and a new and innovative use then found for it.
The panel did support one change to Australian law, to clarify the right of scientists to do research using patented genes.
Prof Christie said an ambiguity had existed since a ruling in 2004 and concerns over research access was driving part of the debate.
"It's not clear whether the law actually does stop them but I'd like to make it clear that it does not stop them," Prof Christie said.
"The point of a patent is not to stifle researchers from making further inventions, the point is to give the original inventor a right in the market place."
The Senate inquiry was triggered by controversy surrounding Genetic Technologies Ltd handling of its rights, in Australia, over a genetic test which can show whether a woman has an increased risk of breast cancer.
The Senate committee, which includes Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan who is an outspoken opponent of gene patenting, is expected to table its report later this month.
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