In the "better late than never" category, Celera Genomics Group - the for-profit arm of the race to sequence the human genome - has agreed to stop selling genetic information and put its data into the public domain. Without much fanfare (in fact the announcement was made in a regular quarterly earnings concall with investors and analysts) Celera announced that after July 1 it would contribute much of its DNA sequence data to public domain through the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

The uses and abuses of genetic information are clearly shaping up to be one of the biggest legal and ethical battles of this century. It would be nice to mark this down as a moral victory for forces of free information, but the simple fact is that Celera couldn't make a profitable business of this. That may be due to the nature of the information or the immaturity of the marketplace. I believe we'll have to fight this battle several more times in the years to come.