Article provides some interesting insight re: patent law and how it is being applied to human genetics. "Patents are difficult to digest — sometimes by design.

Article provides some interesting insight re: patent law and how it is being applied to human genetics. "Patents are difficult to digest — sometimes by design. The more ambiguous they are, the more flexibility a patent holder might have to claim that their intellectual property encompasses someone else's invention. "The first part of a patent reads like a scientific paper written by a lawyer, and the last part reads like a legal document written by a scientist," writes Contreras. "In both cases, you get the worst of both worlds." "Although products of nature are not patentable under US law, some lawyers argued that isolating a gene from its surrounding chromosome fundamentally alters the DNA and therefore constitutes an invention. Another, more utilitarian, defence held that gene patents were necessary to nurture health-care innovation."