Supreme Court: No Patents For Natural DNA Sequences

ColdWetDog writes "The ongoing story of Myriad Genetics versus the rest of the world has come to an end. In a 9-0 decision, the US Supreme Court has decided that human genes cannot be patented. From a brief Bloomberg article: 'Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said isolated DNA is a "product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated." At the same time, Thomas said synthetic molecules known as complementary DNA, or cDNA, can be patented because they require a significant amount of human manipulation to create.' Seems perfectly sane. Raw genes, the ones you find in nature are, wait for it — natural. Other bits of manipulated DNA / RNA / protein which take skill and time to create are potentially patentable. Oddly, Myriad Genetics stock actually rose on that information." Adds reader the eric conspiracy: "The result for Myriad is that they still have protection for their test, however the decision also allows researchers to work with the DNA sequences that are predecessors to the cDNA used in the test." Here's an AP report on the ruling, as carried by the Washington Post.

Comments

Why is it odd?

[Eskarel]

The court case is over and the result wasn't actually all that bad. Sure Myriad and their stock holders would much rather have complete patent rights to the whole thing, but they kept the protections on their actual asset and the court case is now final and decided. Hell even if they'd lost completely their stock probably would have gone up because at least the risk was gone.

Re: Why is it odd?

[Samantha Wright]

The only time cDNA occurs naturally is in the reproduction of a retrovirus or the replication of a retrotransposon. Myriad is still using the natural human sequence in their tests. This is like getting ownership of a quote from a book because you copied it into a Notepad window and then into Google, instead of just pasting it directly into Google in the first place, and then claiming it's a good way to find a certain rare edition of the e-book because it contains a typo made by the original author. It's completely and utterly intellectually dishonest.

Re:Why is it odd?

[PRMan]

Yes. But you can't patent a new species of plant or animal just because you are the first to find it. Those are "natural" ie found in nature. Taking those building blocks and making a discovery with them (a tungsten wire will glow when electricity is applied to it) is worthy of patent protection, not "hey, I found this new thing called tungsten and nobody else can use it".

The market works on expectations

[sjbe]

Oddly, Myriad Genetics stock actually rose on that information.

That's not really surprising. All that means is that the market expected the news to be worse than it actually was. Once the ruling was handed down and the uncertainty removed, the stock rebounds based on the new information. You'll see this all the time where a company has a terrible quarter and their stock price goes up because while it was indeed terrible, it wasn't as terrible as expected.

A thought experiment

[wbr1]

What if a company makes and patents a cDNA that is later found to also exist naturally?

Have we sequenced every variant of every species?

Case in point, Monsato make GM crops that resist herbicides. What if the parts they are patenting, have analouges in some other plant in the wild?