That's the first sane official statement about patents I've heard in a long time. There must be something I'm missing in this debate, because to me the fact tha

That's the first sane official statement about patents I've heard in a long time. There must be something I'm missing in this debate, because to me the fact that naturally occurring genes are not inventions is as obvious as that mathematical theorems are. (It's actually even more obvious, the genes can be plainly seen around us, when you know they're there.) It's as if software algorithms were written on the leaves of trees around us, but we needed to dye them to see the source. Whether a synthetic gene is an invention is a different story to me. That's much more closely related to whether software is patentable. But no one would seriously argue that they could patent RSA if they turned a rock over and found the algorithm written down, no matter how many stones they had to turn to find it.