Gonneke you wrote, "Would this mean that if a mother donates her milk to a GI
patient to cure his illness, this would be illegal? or that the donating
mother and/or the receiver would have to pay royalties?"

I don't know the legal ramifications of these patents.  I think that the
breastfeeding communities around the world ought to get together and hire a
patent attorney and figure it out.  Particularly since in the past year that
I have been looking at this issue, the number of patents on human milk
components continues to escalate.  This, of course would take organization
and money, and an interest.  Also, you all have to realize that these are
patents in the US only.  The European Patent Office in 1997 or 1998 started
accepting life form patents.   Australia may also have patents, too.

I do believe (speculate) that the particular patent you were commenting on
and others like it will only effect any commercialization of human milk.
Now commercialization is not human milk banking.  It dawned on me after
someone on this list posted about a company in Colorado that was trying to
get start-up funding for a new business endeavor.  This company was going to
obtain human milk and then pasteurize and fortify it.  They were hoping women
would donate their milk for this endeavor.

Commercialization of human milk would make it important to the companies
involved to claim ownership of the milk--otherwise the women who donated or
sold their milk to these companies might claim a right to the profits of this
company.  At least that's what makes sense to me in regard to these patents
that are not about ge'ing the components. I would never have said this or
even thought that there would be a serious attempt to commercialize human
milk prior to the posting of that article on Lactnet (many thanks to the
person who posted on it).  The thing to be concerned about is that it is
mostly the infant formula industry that has these patents.  Which probably
means that this first attempt at commercializing human milk must have infant
formula backing.  Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

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