US President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are interested in ensuring that scientists have free access to the data emerging from human genome research. But they are not about to sign a formal trade agreement that would, in effect, bar private companies from snapping up genome-related patents, as suggested in a 20 September report in the London-based Guardian newspaper. The White House flatly denied the suggestion when contacted by Nature Medicine.

The newspaper picked up on talks between Clinton and Blair about their possible endorsement of an existing policy, called the Bermuda Accord, which calls on human genome researchers to post their findings on public databases every 24 hours, says Rachel Levinson, Assistant Director for Life Sciences at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. That way, everyone will have an equal crack at the data. "It's something that the governments agree on already," Levinson says. "[The talks focused on] whether we should do something at a higher level that would show we endorse it."

Levinson said the White House is not opposed to genome-related patents, per se. Instead, Clinton and Blair will urge privately funded scientists to live by the same daily posting rule that applies to researchers funded by the US government's Human Genome Project and the United Kingdom's Wellcome Trust and supported by scientists from France, Germany and Japan.

The Guardian story also stated that British Science Minister Lord Sainsbury "pressed the US government to scrap an agreement with...Craig Venter...to patent as many human genes as possible." Venter's company, Celera Genomics, shook up the field last year when he announced that he had found a way to cut years off the laborious sequencing effort and beat government-funded efforts. Even though the Human Genome Project hopes to release a "working draft" of the genome next spring, some researchers and consumer groups worry that Venter will complete the work first and sell his findings to pharmaceutical companies. If that happens, it is possible that the companies could try to patent relevant sections of the genome, thus limiting its availability to other scientists. Levinson says that the story is "untrue...with respect to any deal to prevent entrepreneurs from getting patents." And Celera spokesperson Paul Gilman says there were no negotiations between Blair and Clinton regarding Celera. Gilman also points out that the company has no intention of limiting access to its data, but it will post selected sequences quarterly rather than daily.

In other patent news...

The US government's system of tracking its own patents is ineffective, according to a new report from the General Accounting Office. Government-funded researchers who patent new products are not completing the paperwork that lets the federal government know that a product exists. Although they usually mention the government's interest on the patent form, the researchers often fail to file a "confirmatory license" with Patent and Trademark Office. That separate statement allows the federal government keep track of patents. The concern is that it could miss out on revenue from inventions from research that it has funded.

Out of 633 patents submitted by joint National Institutes of Health and university collaborations, only 490 were reported to the agency's separate electronic database. Moreover, the unnamed universities dispute the government's claim to about half of the missing patents.