> 3. Actually, if all human genes (and their proteins) were patented to prevent any use by any other parties, then that would be a good thing, because if it tur

> 3. Actually, if all human genes (and their proteins) were patented to prevent any use by any other parties, then that would be a good thing, because if it turns out that one of them is really useful to treat a disease, then a drug company would be more likely to pursue that as a drug candidate because they could license the patent and protect themselves from generics for a few years to pay off all the R&D costs. Your hypothesis has been tested and empirically shown to be false. Genes that have ever been patented have had less subsequent innovation than genes that have never been patented: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16213 http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16213 The reason that this lawsuit is being brought at all is that your interpretation in your final paragraph differs from Myriad's interpretation, so I would not say that everything is 'fine' from either party's perspective.