13 Jun
2013
13 Jun
'13
8:30 a.m.
Hot damn!, that's excellent. Eddan, thanks for posing the news.
For those who don't have time to read the court opinion right now:
The Supreme Court just ruled 9-0 that companies can't patent things they
find in nature, such as human genes. They can patent artificial gene
sequences they produce in the lab, that don't already exist in nature,
which is fine.
And due to this specific natural-gene patent being invalidated, the cost
of breast cancer screening is about to go down.
I'm thinking that this ruling is going to unleash a bunch of other
actions to invalidate "found in nature" patents.
But I wonder about this: will the debate and the legal frontier move
forward to the issue of whether mathematical algorithms are facts of
nature or human creations?
-G.
On 13-06-13-Thu 8:03 AM, Eddan Katz wrote:
The Supreme Court opinion on the Myriad Genetics case
about the BRCA1
& BRCA2 patents is out. Great news for science and medicine. Opinion
was 9-0, invalidating the patent Myriad used to exercise a monopoly
over breast cancer diagnostic tests.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-398_8njq.pdf
Held: "A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature
andnot patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but cDNA
ispatent eligible because it is not naturally occurring."
From the introductory summary --
Each human gene is encoded as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which
takes the shape of a "double helix." Each "cross-bar" in that helix
consists of two chemically joined nucleotides. Sequences of DNA nu-
cleotides contain the information necessary to create strings of
amino acids used to build proteins in the body. The nucleotides that
code for amino acids are "exons," and those that do not are
"introns." Sci- entists can extract DNA from cells to isolate
specific segments for study. They can also synthetically create
exons-only strands of nu- cleotides known as composite DNA (cDNA).
cDNA contains only the exons that occur in DNA, omitting the
intervening introns.
Respondent Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Myriad), obtained several patents
after discovering the precise location and sequence of the BRCA1 and
BRCA2 genes, mutations of which can dramatically in- crease the risk
of breast and ovarian cancer. This knowledge allowed Myriad to
determine the genes' typical nucleotide sequence, which, in turn,
enabled it to develop medical tests useful for detecting muta- tions
in these genes in a particular patient to assess the patient's cancer
risk. If valid, Myriad's patents would give it the exclusive right to
isolate an individual's BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, and would give Myriad
the exclusive right to synthetically create BRCA cDNA. Petitioners
filed suit, seeking a declaration that Myriad's patents are invalid
under 35 U. S. C. §101. As relevant here, the District Court granted
summary judgment to petitioners, concluding that Myriad's claims were
invalid because they covered products of nature. The Federal Circuit
initially reversed, but on remand in light of Mayo Collaborative
Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___, the Circuit
found both isolated DNA and cDNA patent eligible.
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