Microsoft Tried to Patent Evolution Study Method

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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Before you start feeling too sorry for Microsoft’s recent patent trouble, consider this story that Ars Technica posted. Two years ago, MS filed a patent for “clustering phylogenetics methods,” which has existed for years and is used by most people that perform evolutionary biology. The filing has received a nonfinal rejection but it’s still open to revision and resubmission. Wow, just wow.

The patent, filed by Microsoft researcher Steve Ozer in July 2007 andXrecently discovered by a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin,Xclaims ownership of several common phylogenetic methods. At its most basic, however, it seems to patent identifying any evolutionary relationship from sequences: "receiving a plurality of sequences across a plurality of species [and] mapping at least a portion of the plurality of sequences to an evolutionary tree."X
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Something I'd imagine Monsanto doing not Microsoft. Though, I don't understand what they'd expect to do with a patent like this.
 
Maybe they want to launch something like "see what this creature might look like in xxxx" years?
 
Spore v2.0, lol.
It would be nice for SOMEONE to get a hold of a decent piece of software to model evolutionary and population genetics. Right now, there are very few apps out there and the ones that are available are poor at best.
 
Mangudai said:
Something I'd imagine Monsanto doing not Microsoft. Though, I don't understand what they'd expect to do with a patent like this.
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Might be MS patent lawyers running out of things to patent(lack of material from MS R&D) so they are picking randomn things to stay in practice. :)
 
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