Dr. Ada Yonath, a scientist at Israel’s Weizmann Institute, was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday, together with American researchers at Cambridge University, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz. The prize is recognition for the important contribution she has made in mapping ribosomes, the mechanisms that manufacture proteins within cells. This helps explain the mechanism of life, and like all knowledge has value.
Basic research may, of course, be applied to practical ends. For example, her insights may help medical researchers maybe better able to tailor antibiotics for specific diseases. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see Israel’s late night news on Channel One host fellow patent attorney Dr. Gal Ehrlich, as guest commentator on her achievement. True his academic background is life sciences, but like many other patent attorneys including myself, he decided to leave academic research and, instead, to help others obtain patent protection for their inventions. It turned out that he had little idea what he was doing on the program either.
The presenter apparently knew what he was doing since clearly Nobel prizes and patents are similar things. Ehrlich did his best to explain that Nobel prizes are rewarded for scientific discoveries and insights, whereas patents are rewarded for inventions. The presenter wasn’t really listening, wanted to know if there was truth in inane song that “Jewish Head Invents Patents” and kept referring to his script to inform the viewers of interesting and presumably relevant tidbits such as the disk-on-key, the cherry tomato and the soup-nut being Israeli patents.
Now, I have not read Dr. Yonath’s publications, gave up studying biology 25 years ago when my high school wouldn’t let me continue with maths, physics, chemistry and biology to ‘A’ level, due to the weight of lab work, so, despite winning the school biology prize (a lesser achievement than a Nobel, but we boast about what we can), I gave up the formal study of biology and continued with solid state physics, materials science, etc.
Nevertheless, despite not being fully informed of what Yonath has done to move knowledge forwards, I suspect it is more significant than the invention of a square shaped, baked crouton for adding to soup. I imagine that most Israeli viewers, even those of only average intelligence and education, will be able to appreciate the difference as well.
Incidentally, the disk-on-key was actually a non-patent. M-systems forgot to claim that particular application of the flash memory which was an Israel invention and which is patented in Israel. Cherry tomatoes are closer to the wild and first cultivated varieties from the new world than many other varieties on the market. The idiot presenting the news went on to tell Ehrlich that patents are very profitable. Well, occasionally that is, indeed true – even for the applicants and not only for the patent attorneys. It should be noted however, that developing and maintaining a patent portfolio costs a lot of money and most of the time, that money is not recovered.
Weizmann’s technology transfer company, Yeda, makes money from patents, as some of their inventions are profitable. Teva’s best-selling drug, Copaxone, developed at the Weizmann Institute, makes hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties for its inventors, and via Yeda, for the Weizmann Institute. Nevertheless, I suspect that the Weizmann Institute and the vast majority of the researchers there including the inventors of Copaxone and Dr.Yonath, would have little trouble in knowing what is worth more: a Nobel Prize and a 1/3 of the prize money, i.e. less than 1/2 million dollars, or a billion dollars in royalties for a patented drug, spread out over a 10 year period.
Dr Yonath does indeed appear as an inventor of a few patent applications filed by Yeda, including US20090081697A1, US20040265984A1 and US20030027315A1, but so what? The Nobel prize is in appreciation to her valuable contribution to knowledge. It recognizes discoveries and publication of those discoveries. The commercial success or failure of the patent applications do not contribute or detract one iota from her great achievement.
Note, Nobel Prizes in Science are an award based on significant achievement. These are not to be confused with Nobel Peace Prizes which are a joke, as demonstrated by Obama getting this year’s award. By the end of his career he may have achieved something for world peace. So far, he has not even had an accomplishment that could, in the perspective of time, be considered as having averted war or saved lives. Then again, with former winners like Arafat, why shouldn’t Obama have one?
We congratulate Professor Yonath, the Kimmelmans who funded her research, her co-inventors, the Weizmann Institute and the State of Israel. We wish we got more intelligent newscasters and better news programs for our television licenses. I do like soup-nuts though…
Posted by Dr Michael Factor 
