Is this real? Throwing out stem cell patents because "anyone could have done it"?

[Boyo Jim]

I'm not finding much information about this when I search for "Jamie Thomson", who is a poineer in stem cell research. Acoring to this local news story (http://www.channel3000.com/news/13833281/detail.html?rss=c3k&psp=news) ...some scientists are dismissing Thomson's work as obvious and asking the federal government to revoke patents on his work. These scientists argue that any researcher with Thomson's funding and access to human embryos could have done the same thing.

It can't be this simple, can it? The story is suspect because it names no one but the patent holder, nothing specific about a lawsuit or legal claim, and sounds more like a rumor than a news story.

Can anyone working in the field or neightborhood of it, or maybein patent law, shed some light on this?

[jackelope]

"Obviousness" is a big deal in patent law; one of the requirements in order to get a patent granted is the requirement that the invention be "nonobvious." Specifically, the invention (or process, or whatever's being patented) must not be something that would be obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the technology at issue.

It seems to me that the scientists probably did not mean that "anyone with funding and access could have done this," but rather "any person of ordinary skill in stem cell research, with funding and access, could have done this."

(IANAL. Yet.)