Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent

[Hannah Bell]

A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property...United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet issued the 152-page decision, which invalidated seven patents related to the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, whose mutations have been associated with cancer.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York joined with individual patients and medical organizations to challenge the patents last May: they argued that genes, products of nature, fall outside of the realm of things that can be patented. The patents, they argued, stifle research and innovation and limit testing options.

Myriad Genetics, the company that holds the patents with the University of Utah Research Foundation, asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that the work of isolating the DNA from the body transforms it and makes it patentable. Such patents, it said, have been granted for decades; the Supreme Court upheld patents on living organisms in 1980. In fact, many in the patent field had predicted the courts would throw out the suit.

Judge Sweet, however, ruled that the patents were “improperly granted” because they involved a “law of nature.” He said that many critics of gene patents considered the idea that isolating a gene made it patentable “a ‘lawyer’s trick’ that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/30gene.html?ref=business


....About 20% of human genes have already been patented. With ill results for research, as it means researchers have to pay a fee to the patentholders -- pure rentier economy.

[andym]

1. If upheld this would have profound beneficial effects on medical cost of diagnostics

Especially with rapid inexpensive sequencing of the genome near, patents like Myriad's could add immense cost to discovering potential health problems. But let's see what the appeals court say first.

Medical technology is driving costs up around the world, even in countries with socialized medicine. However, US patent law needlessly contributes to expense in this country by allowing patents not allowed elsewhere.

[DainBramaged]

2. the University of Utah Research Foundation

Really, Utah, hmmmmmmmmmm.