Your DNA is also a big integer. You're a just a number.

And I don't think people should have intellectual property rights over my DNA or any DNA pattern.

How about over one's own DNA? An honest question... no snark intended.

I'm a fan of privacy, so I wouldn't like people secretly taking skin samples and distributing facts about my DNA, but I wouldn't like the ability to license parts of my own DNA and expect the government to enforce IP laws to cover my DNA.

That's privacy, not copyright. Completely unrelated.

Not really, the incentive to copyright incentivizes the invasion of privacy. I can walk behind you with a trash bag and voila. Sure, they are different but related.

I imagine there would be trouble with the logistics of copyrighting molecular structures whose primary distinction is their propensity to copy themselves.

Software is commonly accepted as copyrightable, and no exception is made for quines.

1. Create computer virus 2. Spread computer virus 3. Sue victims for copyright infringement

See Monsanto.

Or drug companies, like here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRCA1#Patents.2C_enforcement.2C....

Patent != Copyright

I'm not sure we want to go down this road. For one, it's not "your own" DNA. Barring the occasional mutation, every bit of it came from your parents, grandparents...

I'm not comfortable with the idea that my cells contain someone else's intellectual property.

What about twins?

Maybe your parents should have it?

I agree that your DNA is a big integer , but I don't agree that you're just a number. A number alone is meaningless. The data contained in an MP3 or JPEG alone is meaningless without an interpreter that converts that data to a song or an image. Similarly, the data of your DNA is meaningless without an interpreter that converts that data into a human being.

So we're not just the data in our DNA. We are both our DNA data and the biological processes required to read that data, parse the information, and construct every part of ourselves (hat tip to mom for the initial power supply).

I think it's a valuable introspection to consider that the data set used to build each of us is representable by an integer, but we should not fall into the trap of believe that that is all we are.

DNA is data and code, code is math. Your cells are computers, robots-. Your brain is a Neural network, so it is also a (different kind of) computer (built out of your cells, smaller computers/robots). All this is well very cool and well known. :)

Is that why twin brothers can't sue one another for patent violation? :c)

Twins don't have the same DNA.

Though they do share a whole lot. It would be like making a phone rectangular with a touch screen and a home button. Obviously everything inside your phone is completely original, but because they look vaguely similar, you've violated your twin's copyright.

It seems to me that the extent to which monozygotic twins do not have the same DNA would be comparable to the extent that clones would not.

Wikipedia indicates that the number of differences averages in the low hundreds, surely with such a low number there would remain plenty of parts that remain truly identical. For the purposes of a twin suing a twin for patent infringement, couldn't we just assume one of the many unchanged portions was patented, not the entirety?

Hmm, didn't know about that. Thanks for the info.

looks behind for a huge semi-inflated sentient white ball ...Then we're doomed to be stuck in this patent village forever aren't we!

Well, you are not your DNA.

copyright != patent.