Breaking: Supreme Court rules human genes can't be patented.

[edro]

I am going to patent a foot.

 

[SunnyD]

The reverse transcription part isn't natural, but they didn't invent it either.

Reverse transcription is indeed natural, and does occur in some form (telomerase) in humans.

 

[Eug]

So I return to my earlier example of penicillin. Your premise is that Alexander Fleming shouldn't have been allowed to claim IP rights over or monetize the discovery of penicillin since Penicillin fungi are a "product of nature," but that a drug company that batch cultures it should be able to patent it as a drug?

It's interesting you bring this up.

Alexander Fleming never patented penicillin. The penicillin gene has never been patented either AFAIK. What was actually patented was the process of mass producing the drug.

If Myriad every develops BRCA1 cDNA into a new drug, then I'm all for granting Myriad a patent for that drug.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Looks like the stock is doing just fine:

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=MYGN

 

[CountZero]

The value add isn't in the reproducing the original text but doing the research that provides an application for it. For example, if the book in question were a collection of case law, and you went through 1,000s of pages to find a legal argument that won at trial should you be restricted from being able to claim Intellectual Property rights over the application? In that case, the case law text you "photocopied" is a necessary precursor of the actual IP (using it as a winning legal argument).

While I'm neither scientist or lawyer, that sounds like what happened here. The company spent countless hours analyzing genes to identify one which causes cancer (BRCA1) and a test to identify who has it. Now you're saying that because "DNA exists in nature" that the company shouldn't be able to claim IP rights over the identification of the BRCA1 gene? How the fvck is that fair? And secondly, who would ever spend any time or effort to analyze genes to find which ones have disease-causing impacts if you can't monetize the findings?

The basic premise is the same as telling a miner that although they did all the work and digging to find gold, that they have no ownership rights to it after extraction because it's a "product of nature." Well the gold didn't dig itself up you know.

No, your premise doesn't match.

It is more like gold hasn't been discovered yet. A miner figures out how to find and extract gold, the miner can't patent gold itself but can patent the methods of finding and extracting. So if another person figures out that you can pan for gold they owe the miner nothing.

What Myriad did was discover this gene and its role but by patenting the gene itself no one could touch it. No researcher could develop better methods of finding this gene, no one could replicate the claims made by Myriad to see what the false negative rate really was. No one could touch this gene that otherwise occurs naturally. In the mining example this would mean the miner claims the right to all gold and no one else can do anything with gold without their permission. No panning for it, no trying to find it via cheaper means, no novel means of extraction, nothing.

Taking it a step further what the decision does is essentially give them a patent for gold that has been melted down. People can still search for gold but it remains to be seen if that really matters when they can't do anything with it.

That's my understanding of it and given the stock is doing well I'd hazard a guess that they won.

 

[Gibsons]

What the Supreme Court has done is to invalidate the most absurd part of this, which is patenting the original natural gene. What the Supreme Court hasn't done is to invalidate the patent on cDNA of a natural gene.

The good news is that the testing can be done without using cDNA. It's more difficult in some ways, but getting easier all the time.

 

[ElFenix]

Unusual unanimous ruling. USA Today article is bad for not listing the vote.

unanimous is the most common ruling. about 50% of the court's rulings are unanimous.