IP issues at San Francisco CIRM meeting?

Two items caught the eye of IPBiz in the californiastemcell post:
Incident at the Marriott: Stem Cell Agency Bars Public From Meeting . [IPBiz: is this a 21st century Ox-Box incident?]

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Prop. 71, approved by 59 percent of voters in 2004, exempted CIRM from some aspects of the state's sunshine laws. It is not clear whether those exemptions apply in this case. But the state Constitution (section three) was also changed by voters in 2004 to guarantee the right of the public to access. That change was approved by a much larger vote (89 percent) than Prop. 71. It is our understanding that if conflicts exist in such cases, the measure with the larger vote takes precedence.


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The session on egg procurement had been switched to an earlier morning time slot and already had taken place, we were told. Our printed agenda was outdated. Further, we would not be granted entrance to the meeting underway. Why? It was closed to the public because conferees maintain concerns over protecting their intellectual property. Questions remain. What intellectual property concerns could there be over oocyte procurement policy?
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The workshop this week was not on egg donation, it was on nuclear transfer research and whether or not CIRM should continue to consider funding projects in that field or whether other technologies had made the pursuit of this difficult science no longer necessary.
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As for the need to protect intellectual property, proprietary or unpublished information, that claim is simply poppycock. CIRM has not disclosed how many persons were in the closed-door meeting, but it is impossible to keep information secret when even more than a handful of persons is present, and most likely not even then.


[IPBiz post 6003]