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Tell me your key season-ending plot point isn't based on a complete and total misunderstanding of patent law. If these folks were from the UK (as Mrs. S's claimed background suggests, at least some of the work seems to have been done there unless she was lying about absolutely everything), the patent term would be 20 years there, that is, long expired. In the US, there is a theoretical chance that some weird submarine patent application is hanging around, filed and unpublished pre-1995 and thus unexpired, but human organisms are not patent-eligible (and it's not as if they would be in the UK either). Same with Canada (though there the key date is 1989); also a world domination plan would require international protection.
Note that I am not saying that Sarah should know this (though Cosima could reasonably be expected to have a clue, given her field), but rather that the schemers supposedly behind this plan should have known this: any plan that didn't involve monetizing the technology until the clones were 30 was ... well, let's just say that the Underpants Gnomes have a better business model. Of course "intellectual property" could mean "trade secret," but that's not going to work either (and never could have been expected to do so) for reasons not worth going into at this juncture.
All will be forgiven if it turns out that the baddies don't have such a plan, currently, though there was some prior 25-year-old monetization plan that didn't work out, and now Sarah and Cosima are operating on bad 30-year-old information. Because that would be hilarious.
Note that I am not saying that Sarah should know this (though Cosima could reasonably be expected to have a clue, given her field), but rather that the schemers supposedly behind this plan should have known this: any plan that didn't involve monetizing the technology until the clones were 30 was ... well, let's just say that the Underpants Gnomes have a better business model. Of course "intellectual property" could mean "trade secret," but that's not going to work either (and never could have been expected to do so) for reasons not worth going into at this juncture.
All will be forgiven if it turns out that the baddies don't have such a plan, currently, though there was some prior 25-year-old monetization plan that didn't work out, and now Sarah and Cosima are operating on bad 30-year-old information. Because that would be hilarious.
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(It's totally Canadian. Her useless boyfriend in the first episode is Francophone.)
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I really liked the patent revel. That seemed totally believable in a sci-fi way with what's going on in RL. I could have sworn I'd read something where human genes were patented. Not a whole person of course, but if individual genes have been patented there is precedent. Plus there are those mice with human brain cells in them, which I'm sure are patented. Couldn't they have renewed the patent at some point? Or maybe it's not an official patent because it's not legal now, but is a legal maneuver to have prior claim for some future time when it is legal?
They make animals with certain medical conditions in order to test cures. I wonder if that's part of what's been done here.
I'm glad to know someone else who's been watching it. :) I've been very impressed with it so far, especially by the performance of the lead actress. She's phenomenal! She'll never win an Emmy because it's genre, but she totally deserves too IMO. Between XF, BSG, Heroes, and Lost I've really soured on grand conspiracy shows, but I'm hoping since it's BBC they have a plan and end game in advance, and aren't just making it up as they go and dragging it out to squeeze every last drop out of money it.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Black#Location
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Yeah, it struck as a weird reveal, esp because there are such other huge glaring issues....
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I choose to believe this takes place in Toronto. I'm tired of New York, and it's nice for Toronto to be itself and not dressed up as someplace else. I always liked Toronto.
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I think the key to Cosima is that she's incredibly naive. She may be a very clever scientist, but she's also an enthusiastic student who thinks she's more world-savvy than she really is -- see the mess with Delphine. She's wanted to believe all along that the bad guys aren't so bad. They're intellectually exciting, they include gorgeous and clever blondes, and they might be able to cure her cough. Evidence that they really do see her as a science experiment was shocking to her in a way it wasn't to Sarah and Allison, who already believed the worst of Leekie's lot. Cosima has been in denial a long time, and if Delphine hadn't defected, maybe even if she discovered that message in her DNA, she would still be trying to come up with a way to rationalize it away. After all, as a biologist, she'll have encountered the concept of gene patenting before.
Sarah was just barely tipped over the edge to signing. When Cosima called her and told her "Don't do it", that was enough to pull her back. It's not in Sarah's nature to cooperate with controlling authority figures that way.
All will be forgiven if it turns out that the baddies don't have such a plan, currently, though there was some prior 25-year-old monetization plan that didn't work out, and now Sarah and Cosima are operating on bad 30-year-old information. Because that would be hilarious.
That's what I'm hoping for. The desire for contracts makes it clear that Leekie & co. don't expect anything written in illegal clones' gene sequences to hold up in court.
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Orphan Black