Company offers celebs protection from cloning

A company in the US is offering celebrities copyright protection against fans who might want to clone them, it was disclosed today.

San Francisco-based DNA Copyright Institute is looking ahead to a time when fans may want more than an autograph from their idols.

In future, cloning might become a bigger fear for celebrities than stalking.

Assuming technology makes it possible, all a fan would need is a few living cells left behind on a glass or exchanged in a handshake.

The company is now offering to record and store the genetic blueprints of high-profile individuals.

As the DNA pattern’s ‘‘author’’, the client will get copyright protection to prevent ‘‘DNA theft and misappropriation, cloning and other unauthorised activities’’, New Scientist magazine reported.

Andre Crump, president of the company, said: ‘‘A lot of people are going to want to clone people they admire.’’

He said the price was under £1,000 and 10 people had already signed up.

For an extra fee, the company will also try to register the pattern with the US Copyright Office - although this is not necessary to establish copyright.

But legal expert Stephen Barnett, from the University of California at Berkeley, dismissed the notion that DNA can be copyrighted.

He said: ‘‘This is nonsense. Whoever is saying that is ignorant of the term copyright.’’

The idea that people are the ‘‘authors’’ of their own DNA did not hold water legally, he added. Even if it did, he doubted that it would provide protection against being cloned.

The company’s lawyer Matthew Marca insisted that since clones will share the genetic fingerprint of the original person they will be in violation of copyright.

Crump admitted to New Scientist that the month-old company was still negotiating office space and would out-source all the biochemistry work.

The idea of copyrighting DNA is not new. New York-based conceptual artist Larry Miller began issuing 10 US dollar (£6.25) Genetic Coded Copyright Certificates in 1992. But they were never meant to be legally binding, only to highlight issues of ownership.

San Francisco artist Marilyn Donahue has for the past few years been helping people to ‘‘copyright’’ their genome for little more than the price of a postage stamp, said New Scientist.

Her method is to take a photo of yourself depositing DNA from your tongue onto the back of a stamp and mail it to yourself.

Self-directed mail is often used by poets and writers to document the date of a work’s creation and establish copyright.