dsandler.org/wp

A somewhat awkwardly-written but +5 Insightful piece at Slashdot
contains an excellent summary of why gene patenting is stupid. In essence:
(summary mine)

Patents are for protecting an invented process, not the end result of that
process. Purifying a protein to isolate a gene is a process; you can patent
your purification technique [though those have been around for a while, and
you’d have to work hard to find a truly novel technique] but you can’t
[shouldn’t be able to] patent the end result — the protein, and
the gene it represents. Eli Whitney didn’t receive a patent for
cotton, he received it for the cotton gin. The patent system
was developed to protect novel inventions, not end results; results are
[should be] free to be sought by all mankind, unencumbered. If a result can
be obtained by a patented method, you can license the patent and pay
royalties, or develop a new method. Product patents exist and cover
invented drugs and chemicals, but genes are discovered in the genome. Tell
me, once a gene has been patented, how many ways are there to replicate that
genome (which you may feel you have a right to do, especially if that genome
is in your own cells)? Someone else has a patent on your DNA.