Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-398_8njq.pdf

by jakewalker • 13 years ago

372 165 13 years ago

supremecourt.gov

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

This is the right result. Great news.

mpyne2• 13 years ago

Unanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion.

Myriad kind of still wins as their cDNA synthesis technique is affirmed patentable, which would presumably be used in conjunction with a patient's own BRCA genes to determine their cancer risk. So the precise test itself appears patented still, but now other companies can make use of the BRCA genes themselves, perhaps to develop other treatments that don't use the cDNA synthesis technique.

jweese2• 13 years ago

Justice Scalia's concurrence, reproduced here in full:

"I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature."

rayiner• 13 years ago

You have to appreciate his dedication to rigor.

dekhn10• 13 years ago

cDNA occurs in nature (reverse transcriptase).

In fact DNA intermediates with introns spliced can be reintegrated into the genome.

Further, faulty viruses can acquire oncogenes (intron-splicted, mtuated versions of growth factors, like EGF and HER2/neu) and transfer them to other cells via cDNA intermediates. It's not hard to believe that nature has in fact passed BRCA cDNAs around via retroviral intermediates.

1337biz• 13 years ago

I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief.

I wish more public officials would show this kind of honesty, esp. those voting on new laws and regulations. I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message.

unmei2• 13 years ago

But they surely don't have a patent on all cDNA synthesis techniques, especially given that that is a highly generic technique (it should fall under the "obvious from previous art" criteria). So other companies should be able to utilize a cDNA as well so long as they don't simply follow the Myriad protocol?

jweese2• 13 years ago

I believe they just have a patent on these particular cDNA types, namely cDNA created from BRCA1 or BRCA2, and not on the well-known lab techniques for creating them.

mpyne2• 13 years ago

I don't know the details, I only browsed through the front matter/syllabus, and I've certainly not read the patent in question.

tomku2• 13 years ago

Their patent isn't on technique ("method" in the ruling), but on the actual cDNA sequence itself. As such, it's specific to the two BRCA genes.

Of course, that just makes it even more ridiculous.

berberous• 13 years ago

Yes, that's correct. Also, keep in mind:

"First, the case is only about whether genes are patentable subject matter; that is, are they the kinds of things that are eligible for patent protection under section 101 of the Patent Act, assuming that all other requirements for patentability are met. Even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of gene patents here, every gene patent would still have to pass the tests of novelty (section 102) and nonobviousness (section 103), and to be the subject of an adequately explicit written description (section 112)."

That's taken from this legal genomics blog: http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2013/05/01/some-t...

Highly recommend all of their articles if you are interested in this kind of thing.

tocomment3• 13 years ago

But there are ways of detecting BRCA mutations without cDNA right? What does 23andme use? Isn't that a chip based method? And straight genome sequencing which should be cheap enough in a few years is another way around it, no?

dnautics19• 13 years ago

yeah, but no one uses cDNA synthesis to do genotyping anymore. They use genechips or direct sequencincg. Direct sequencing is NOT covered by the myriad patent; and genechips use such short DNA sequences that the 'intron' exception doesn't hold.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

You can make synthetic DNA?!?

archgoon• 13 years ago

Yes. This has been around for several decades. Furthermore, you can request companies on the internet to synthesize sequences for you and mail you the results.

(First result from google)

http://www.invitrogen.com/

Wikipedia Article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gene_synthesis

bdg2• 13 years ago

Yes. It's basically a really cool version of an ink jet printer powered by sugar. A few labs will print out your sequence, pack it into a dead cell, freeze it and ship it to you.

Obviously there's more to it than this really simplified statement but that's what goes on at a high-level. There's a number of people writing software for projects to help anyone author synthetic DNA (see http://synbiota.ca/ ) and start playing with this stuff, just as we do with makerbots or the PC revolution of yesteryear.

quux• 13 years ago

Darn, well there goes my plan to patent myself and require that my wife buy a license before she can bear my children.

wslh• 13 years ago

I imagine next generations paying the Monsanto(s) of synthetic DNA...

rpledge• 13 years ago

I think you would find a lot of competition that would be willing to provide the required service at zero cost.

cwp• 13 years ago

Copyright would be more appropriate there. Children could be considered derivative works, but I don't see how they could be patent infringement.

lsiebert• 13 years ago

You are a transformative work based on your dna anyway.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

You're only licensing the patent from your parents anyway.

JosephBrown• 13 years ago

An mRNA strand that is about to be translated into a protein has the introns removed, so how is the cDNA different enough from the naturally occurring mRNA other than it is a mirror image?

Also, when did cDNA come to mean composite DNA instead of complementary DNA? This seems made up to imply some kind of invention instead of it just being the mirror image of the DNA molecule.

rcthompson4• 13 years ago

It doesn't matter that cDNA is similar to something found in nature. The fact is that DNA complementary to the mature spliced mRNA sequences of the BRCA1/2 genes does not exist in nature.

dekhn10• 13 years ago

wrong. this happens in retroviral transmission all the time.

mokus• 13 years ago

This really sounds like hair splitting to me. Along the lines of saying "well, your software patent is for a program that is stored on a GMR disk platter. Mine's stored in NAND flash, and that's never been done before!"

If the sequence is logically equivalent but stored on a different medium, how is that novel? The invention of the new medium or new techniques for transcribing between media may be, but the sequence itself isn't.

polyfractal• 13 years ago

It is probably more accurate to say that cDNA represents a snapshot in time of a particular mRNA "species". Any particular mRNA could lead different lives, depending on what kind of post-translational modifications are made to it (e.g. different proteins editing the mRNA differently before it is eventually transcribed).

So any particular mRNA might actually have several different products, or may just get chopped up into shRNA or microRNA.

rflrob• 13 years ago

I am a biologist (who regularly sequences cDNA), and it is properly understood to mean complementary DNA. In fact, the syllabus' description of the process is far enough from what the process of actually making cDNA is like that it seems to me there could be grounds for a challenge, even though as others have noted, cDNA is no longer widely used for these kinds of diagnostics.

michaelhoffman2• 13 years ago

The syllabus is not part of the decision and has no legal effect (it says this at the top of every syllabus), so wouldn't be grounds for a challenge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Detroit_Timber...

gridmaths• 13 years ago

sweeeet... sanity prevails!

tocomment3• 13 years ago

Does this mean we'll soon see 1000s more SNPs available from 23andme? What are the biggest new SNP's they can test for?

daughart20• 13 years ago

It absolutely should mean this. Maybe 23andme can be something more than a toy.

tocomment3• 13 years ago

What are some examples of exciting new SNPs they could test for? Besides BRCA.

furconit• 13 years ago

Patents are silly !

dnautics19• 13 years ago

I'm generally opposed to patents, but I think this decision is crazy. For starters, the patentability of a gene now depends on whether or not there's an intron in that gene? The isolated sequence doesn't exist as a molecule in nature, and the patent was a patent on that molecule. Should have been a straightforward "gene patents (the way they were done by myriad) are allowed". Keeping in mind, there are a ton of very facile ways of breaking such a gene patent.

EDIT: Actually I'm completely opposed to patents.

EDIT2: Here is a more detailed analysis - I didn't post it earlier since dreamhost was down. http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html

daughart20• 13 years ago

This decision affirms a previous decision that synthetic modifications to DNA sequences are patented - regardless of whether they have introns. You see, the ruling suggests that the act of creating a new synthetic, modified DNA molecule (in this case without introns) is patent-able. (Not a comment on your opinion about patents, only the part about patentability relying on introns.)

dnautics19• 13 years ago

can you link to this previous decision?

RabbitAngstrom3• 13 years ago

A co-worker in my lab pointed out that Myriad's stock is actually rising[1] after the decision.The best guess is that Myriad's competitive advantage is shifting to the enormous amounts of BRCA sequences they have obtained -- this would increase the cancer-vs-normal mutation prediction power considerably.

[1] http://www.google.com/finance?cid=658315

jfb• 13 years ago

Also, they now have legal certainty whereas before the decision there was a chance the whole kit and kaboodle would have been tossed out.

michaelhoffman2• 13 years ago

Not anymore.

benjamincburns• 13 years ago

At one point I heard that some farmers, who were unaware that their crops contained patented genetic modifications as a result of uncontrolled natural reproduction with other GM crops, were being sued by patent holders. Does this ruling weigh in on this scenario?

It seems that inventions which copy themselves and masquerade in difficult/expensive to detect ways (see plant reproduction, airborne pollen) wasn't something foreseen by those who wrote our patent laws.

jadyoyster• 13 years ago

This seems to be a myth: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-fi...

takluyver2• 13 years ago

I think the patents there relate to the combination and use of genes, not the genes themselves, so it's not.

The famous case about that didn't actually hinge on whether GM crops had turned up on a farm unexpectedly, but on whether the farmer had then deliberately selected seed from the GM plants to replant the next year's crop.

rvkennedy• 13 years ago

Does this mean that someone born with synthetic DNA is guilty of infringement if they have children? Do they need to buy a licence to keep living? Perhaps as a compromise, the court can decide that they count as three fifths of a person.

RabbitAngstrom3• 13 years ago

Once you are born with synthetic DNA, is it not "existing in nature?" An interesting point, but cloning is not very popular among bioethicists.

anonymfus• 13 years ago

Why cloning? In vitro fertilisation is common.

rgbrenner2• 13 years ago

The parents would have bought the license for their child when they agreed to have the DNA modified. By the time that child has children, the patent would have expired.

andre2• 13 years ago

Unless they change that, and keep on extending it, as it has been done with copyrights.

wcfields• 13 years ago

So... expect numerous patent lawsuits in Kentucky?

jasonjei• 13 years ago

Another possibility: the kid is a teen parent...

eldude2• 13 years ago

A historical correction to the misplaced tone of your 3/5ths reference, the 3/5ths compromise was by the anti-slavery republican north to prevent the southern democratic slavers from dominating the House of Representatives and the electoral college.[1]

[1] http://www.redstate.com/jeffdunetz/2010/07/18/were-our-found...

michael_miller• 13 years ago

I know you meant well with your comment, but in general, it's best to avoid well-actually comments. This is one of Hacker School's core rules; they elaborate on why it's a good idea to avoid these types of comments at https://www.hackerschool.com/manual.

djcapelis• 13 years ago

For whatever it's worth, the 3/5ths number originally came from negotiations over modifying the original government documents of the united states: the articles of confederation where the question was whether or not slaves would count for the purposes of taxation. When the constitutional convention came around and the same debate showed up again, except now instead of taxation the question was representation, the proponents flipped positions but the 3/5ths number ended up getting picked up once again. Plus a ban on slave importation was set for 20 years in the future, which is a portion of the compromise often ignored in retrospect. (Mostly because it turned out not to be as effective as people hoped.)

The main thrust of your argument is absolutely correct though, in that the northern folks generally argued that slaves were treated as property (and so should be taxed as such) and the southern folks generally argued that they should count as people. (And should be represented as such.)

No one seemed to get to the idea that if you were going to count someone for the purposes of representation, maybe you also had to let them vote. That would have also brought up interesting questions around the disenfranchisement of various other classes of people, namely women, some white men without property and freed slaves right from the start. Instead we had to wait a long time to start solving those problems.

Politics can be weird.

tanzam75• 13 years ago

... the anti-slavery republican north to prevent the southern democratic slavers ...

The party system did not form until George Washington's first term. There were certainly factions, but nothing like the "Republican" or "Democratic" parties of today.

When the party system began during George Washington's first term, the two parties were called the "Federalist" and the "Democratic-Republican" parties. New England was primarily Federalist. The Mid-Atlantic and Southern states were primarily Democratic-Republican.

The Democratic-Republican Party is, in some sense, the ancestor of both major political parties today. The Democratic-Republican Party split into the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party after the 1824 election. This division forms the basis of the two major political parties we have today. (With several messy breakups, reunions, splinterings, and Third Parties.)

craigyk2• 13 years ago

I take this ruling as protection from infringement if a synthetic sequence happens to emerge naturally.

toufka• 13 years ago

In combination with the recent Monsanto case, it'd be consistent that the individual would owe licensing fees for each additional reproduction.

andrewfong• 13 years ago

That's an interesting scenario given the recent ruling in Bowman v. Monsanto. If planting the offspring of synthetic Monsanto seeds infringes Monsanto's patents, then by extension, conceiving the offspring of a person with synthetic DNA could infringe patents as well.

In practice, this would be limited by the 14th Amendment. The prohibition against slavery trumps patent law, period. But I'm curious how far biotech companies would go before they got shut down.

EDIT: As pointed out below, 13th not 14th. My bad. Although due process in 14th would probably kick in as well.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

In practice, this would be limited by the 14th Amendment. The prohibition against slavery trumps patent law, period.

The prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude (except as punishment for a crime) is the 13th Amendment, not the 14th Amendment.

Symmetry• 13 years ago

It's possible that conceiving in those circumstances could be copyright infringement, but that's just a civil tort. So the parents might get sued for lots of money, but there wouldn't be any claims against the child. I don't see how slavery enters into it.

I'd hope that a court would hold differently with human reproduction than Bowman v. Monsanto, but even if they don't it wouldn't be anything to do with the 13th Amendment.

Androsynth• 13 years ago

I always thought a good compromise would be that you can sell genetically modified seeds (or eggs or whatever) but you shouldnt be able to own anything that is produced by those seeds. ie children, saplings etc

in other words, you own the process of genetically modifying an organism, not the genes.

I dont know how realistic or unrealistic this is, since ianal.

edit: someone else mentioned the monsanto ruling, which makes this idea sound unrealistic

akiselev2• 13 years ago

IANAL (and for this hypothetical I don't think it matters) but with this SCOTUS ruling, you could argue that even though the original DNA strand was synthetic and patented, once it was injected into the embryo, nature takes over and copies and makes it its own. The very dynamic nature of mutations and sexual reproduction should (rationally) invalidate the "infringement" of reproduction. You could also argue that penalizing a child for what is unarguably random chance on the part of their parents is cruel and unusual, not to mention this would mean that the debt (licensing agreement) is essentially inherited by the child, which is illegal if not outright unconstitutional to my knowledge (i.e., unless the debt is under a joint card with the deceased, you cannot inherit their credit card debt, although the creditors get rights to part of the estate covering the debt).

Edit: Apparently Myriad patented more than just strands for the BRCA genes, including some methods and tests, which is one of the reasons their case is important to SCOTUS. With our current patent system, I think you'd have to patent a lot more than just the gene to be able to sue people over having it, especially children of genetically engineered parents.

shmerl8• 13 years ago

Idiotic decision. DNA should not be patentable.

daughart20• 13 years ago

What if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?

shmerl8• 13 years ago

No, I principally think than biosubstances should not be patentable. The fact that DNA was generated artificially doesn't make it somehow magically different from the natural one.

Kliment• 13 years ago

Honestly, no, it should not be patentable. This is entirely equivalent to a software patent.

alok-g• 13 years ago

Do they allow patenting a DNA sequence specified by a regular expression or a grammar? Also, what happens if the synthetic DNA is later found to exist naturally?

abitsios• 13 years ago

There's a new TV series that touches upon this - Orphan Black.

---- Spoilers, obviously ----

So they're clones, and they have a "special repeating marker" of some sorts. One of the clones is a biochemist, and she manages to decode it. Turns out, it is a copyright message covering those organisms and their biological offspring as property of X corporation. -------- Spooky, but wouldn't the message get diluted after reproduction?

sageikosa• 13 years ago

From what I understand, the likelihood of any cistron in the genetic code getting diluted is dependent on the sequence length compared to the overall length of the chromosome on which it can be found.

However, since this is sci-fi, it may be possible that some of the genetic sequence is setup to actually alter the meiosis process and not perform any "crossing over" events in egg cell construction.

akiselev2• 13 years ago

Can anyone with experience clarify this ruling? Is the SCOTUS saying that just because the specific cDNA strand doesn't exist in nature (as far as I know), then it is patentable?

Correct me if I misunderstood the ruling, but it seems to be absolutely ridiculous. You could just automate the process of isolating genes, sequencing them and statistically identifying their mRNA strands, isolating them, and creating cDNA strands. I know this isn't technically "nonobvious" but if you can automate the process to the point where you have robots spitting out gene patents, then it's a pretty low bar.

dnautics19• 13 years ago

The process of making cDNA libraries (with and without robots) has long been solved. Usually in order to get a patent you need to prove "usefulness" which is not really automatable.

And if you want to read my writeup (which is slightly geared toward explaining the biology from simple first principles, http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html)

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

While its not a complete win I think this is an ok compromise. Clearly Myriad is going to be impacted as other people come up with ways to test for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes without infringing on their process, and it will make screening for these genes much less expensive.

But it leaves open the question of "infringement" on cDNA when you aren't party to the creation. Specifically the guys who have GMO Wheat growing in their field in Oregon, if they didn't put it there, they didn't know it had become GMO, and it was only discovered when Japan tested it, then what is their liability? And what is Monsanto's? (GMO Wheat isn't approved) I suspect these "escapes" of cDNA will become more common and the "factories" producing them, things like e.coli and algae, won't really respect the owner's rights here. :-)

cantankerous• 13 years ago

This should give Myriad a new incentive to develop less expensive tests for this gene. They should already have a head start.

HarryHirsch3• 13 years ago

cDNA synthesis is very cheap, a few cents per base. They do like everyone else: charge whatever the market will bear, and, quite frankly, in healthcare this isn't something anyone should be comfortable with.

andre2• 13 years ago

Relevant: Idaho farmers sue Monsanto over GMO wheat

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/06/12/2613756/idaho-farme...

carbocation• 13 years ago

I do not see how there is any cDNA involved in a plant that has modified genes.

Are you assuming that the plant is infected with a retrovirus?

A genome with a modified gene is not cDNA, and I'm not sure how to parse your comment so I'm basically trying to see if there was an error in your comment or an error in my reading of it.

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

If you read the opinion that this thread links, you will see that Supreme court defines 'cDNA' as 'not naturally occurring'. In Monsanto's case, they inserted genes into crops to make them resistant to one of their own herbicides. That crosses the threshold of 'not naturally occurring' and then becomes cDNA in the context of this ruling.

craigyk2• 13 years ago

While the second part is a bit disappointing. Does that mean if you manage to successfully isolate a natural version of a patented cDNA, then that patent becomes effectively invalid?

In practice this might not be the hardest thing to do. Do you like someone's engineered version of a gene? Then transform some randomized libraries into cell cultures (or add mutagens) and keep fishing until you extract a "natural" copy that is the same as the patented cDNA.

eldude2• 13 years ago

Michael Crichton's novel "Next"[1] was a fantastic exploration of the implications of such issues being brought up here like: liability when the infringing patents are in you, in animals, in human-animal hybrids capable of human-level intelligence, and how the world deals with life when Man plays god.

Another excellent book on the ethics of bio-engineering and patentability is the true story, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel) [2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1...

albertzeyer• 13 years ago

Isn't all synthetic DNA based on natural DNA?

bdg2• 13 years ago

No. Natural DNA occurs in nature, much like a the alignment of magnetic fields may occur in some metals. Synthetic DNA has been designed by someone who sat down and said "Okay, today we're going to write DNA, it's sequence will be ACGTTTGACGTACGTTCAGTG....." and we're going to mix our newly designed gene into a larger natural DNA strand and this synthetic gene inside of the DNA will make this tree glow a very slight yellow-tinge, then we're going to sell that on kickstarter. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plan... (the only reason they're using a larger DNA strand is a full strand might cost in the range of $100b-$1t presently)

This is not the same as what's been done more frequently for the last long while which was dissecting existing genes from other DNA strands (lets say gene XYZ from a starfish) and introducing it into a bacteria.

Also, this doesn't mean I agree with the new law. I think this motion is even more nonsensical than software patents we face today, and has already handed off all the wonderful innovations that the synthetic biology revolution has to offer to a nation who's pumping loads of cash into this sector: China.

acqq• 13 years ago

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/the-supreme-court-s...

it is not the scientists who removed the introns from the officially unpatentable original DNA sequence to make the new, patentable cDNA sequence. It is nature itself, through the magic by which pre-RNA, which includes the introns, becomes messenger RNA, which does not. The Supreme Court described this process by saying, “the pre-RNA is then naturally ‘spliced’ by the physical removal of the introns” -- that is, the introns are removed as part of the ordinary process by which messenger RNA is created. The role scientists then subsequently play is to take the messenger RNA and use it to synthesize the intron-free cDNA.

To put it much more simply, there is nothing that a 6-year-old would consider “invented” about the patentable cDNA. It is nothing more than the messenger RNA flipped into a DNA sequence that omits unnecessary elements that nature already excluded. The sequence that codes the proteins is just as naturally occurring as the original DNA itself, which the court held couldn’t be patented because it was naturally occurring. The distinction is, to put it bluntly, a lawyer’s distinction, not a scientist’s.

(by Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard)

daughart20• 13 years ago

From what I understand, Myriad's test involved synthesis of cDNA (which we scientists refer to as "complementary DNA", not "composite DNA" as SCOTUS does). This is still covered by the patent. However, any test based on sequencing the genomic DNA, for example, would not violate Myriad's patent. Genomic sequencing of these genes was previously a violation of the patent. This is definitely a step forward.

In the long run, Myriad is hosed because they no longer own the sequence, including analysis. Any diagnostic not using reverse transcription of the mRNA does not violate Myriad's patent. This includes synthesis of any non-cDNA polymer, such as XNA.

alsocasey• 13 years ago

The issue is that a hypothetical diagnostic attempting to sequence this region would likely be pre-processed with a PCR to facilitate sequencing of only the region of interest... this necessarily involves a cDNA step.

You could sequence the whole genome at higher depth, but this would be more expensive.

Edit: My mistake, the patent covers the reverse transcription step exclusively, not the act of transcription in general - which means PCR from genomic DNA is fine, but rtPCR or cDNA library construction is not... no scientific consistency there, but looks like cheaper BCRA tests in the near future.

HarryHirsch3• 13 years ago

To put it much more simply, there is nothing that a 6-year-old would consider “invented” about the patentable cDNA.

That's the point. Patent law is very suitable for processes that cost millions to develop, but in pharmaceutics the big cost factor isn't process development, it is the discovery. What Myriad did is identify the gene, that is where the cost was sunk that they somehow have to recover.

But since you can patent only things, and not intellectual property, the Supreme Court had to resort to all kinds of legal hacks of the sort that judges hate to see applied in their courtroom.

jamesjporter• 13 years ago

Saying that Myriad was the first to discover BRCA1 is somewhat disingenuous; other labs did it independently at roughly the same time. Moreover, deciding when a gene was "discovered" is a minefield. What constitues discovery? Identification of a mutant? Cloning the gene? Sequencing it? There are many steps to this process.

daughart20• 13 years ago

This sets the stage for a simple way to overturn any cDNA patent. Somewhere in the body of any person infected with a retrovirus such as HIV exists a completely natural molecule of BRCA1 cDNA.

dnautics19• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure prior art doesn't work that way.

daughart20• 13 years ago

Isn't the standard here whether or not these molecules exist in nature? Honest question.

dnautics19• 13 years ago

interesting side effect - prokaryotic genes are basically unpatentable!!

niels_olson3• 13 years ago

The nucleotides that code for amino acids are “exons,” and those that do not are “introns.”

Should read "the nucleotide sequences". If they can't get the definitions right, why is the rest of the opinion valid?

Is it time for a "Court of Science" at the district or appellate level?

niels_olson3• 13 years ago

What if your life is saved from the debilitating effects of an enzyme deficiency by a virally-delivered sequence which also infects your spermatocytes (1)? And that sequence is passed to your child?

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_immunology#The_effec...

caycep• 13 years ago

Kind of wondering, did Clarence Thomas actually write this, or did it fall to some young law clerk that had to take a crash course on molecular genetics?

frozenport• 13 years ago

I can live with this: As a general rule of thumb nature isolated is not patentable, Synthetic is.

Fuxy• 13 years ago

Yes! Finally some forward progress. Still needs work though.

Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

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