Well, all of the patents over ESCR held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation have been upheld by the Patent Office. From the story:
The rulings mean the foundation will continue to control primary
intellectual property rights to embryonic stem cell research in the United States. If that research leads to successful medical products or procedures before the patents expire in 2015, the school could win royalties.
The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and the Public Patent Foundation, which asked the patent office to throw out the patents in 2006, argued that their enforcement slowed U.S. stem cell research and drove some investment overseas.
So what is really going on here is a good old fashioned fight among capitalists over who gets to eat the biggest piece of the pie, as I pointed out here at SHS last year.
Typique.