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Judge Finds Major DNA Patent Invalid

Posted by Hemos on from the there-might-be-still-justice dept.

cswiii writes "In what some Slashdot readers might consider a breath of fresh air, a judge in San Francisco ruled that a patent on DNA replication and analysis was questionably obtained and thus, invalid. An appeal has already been promised by the defendants. " Whew. There's some form of sanity left in the world I guess. Reversing the Taq DNA Polyemerase patent is a pretty major deal for genetic research - it makes PCR much easier to perform.

1 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. well... by MillMan · · Score: 5

    While this is great there decision wasn't one of "prior art" as much as it was:

    U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker on Tuesday upheld a challenge by
    Promega Corp., which argued that scientists got the important patent in
    1990 by misrepresenting their experiments and falsely claiming advances
    over previous discoveries.

    So it sounds to me like it was more for scientific technical reasons. It also sounds like there is another company that could come forward and gets patents like this one. What do you guys think? Same interpretation?

    If it is the way I think it is, there really hasn't been any breakthrough...