"X-o4 Hereby Demands, Through Counsel, That Humanity Cease Its Use of the Patented Subject Matter Immediately"

"Cease and Desist."
By Tyler Young.
Illustration by JACEY.
First appearance: Nature/Futures, 19 January 2017.
Short short short story (1 page).
Online at Nature.com (HERE; PDF).

     "The only facts that matter are these: (1) X-o4 holds the Patent; and (2) humanity's existence violates the Patent."

Twelve billion individual patent violations per second! A tort lawyer's dream come true . . .

Resources:
- Tyler Young's ISFDb bibliography is (HERE).
- For an outline of tort law, go to Wikipedia (HERE); find out more about patents (HERE). Gene patenting is a new wave agitating the broader discipline of bioethics; see the Wikipedia articles about "Bioethics" (HERE), "Biological patent" (HERE), "Bioprospecting" (HERE), and "Intellectual property" (HERE). In our story, X-o4 could be seen to fit the broad definition of a biopirate:

   "Biopiracy was coined by Pat Mooney, to describe a practice in which indigenous knowledge of nature, originating with indigenous peoples, 
is used by others for profit, without authorization or compensation to 
the indigenous people themselves."

  Of course, X-o4 doesn't quite see it that way.
- X. V. J. Glorbton warns humanity against "any attempt to circumvent our rights by deuteration of your species"; see The Free Dictionary (HERE) for what he/she/it means.
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