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Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
- snowwrestler 13y agoThis is the right result. Great news.
- mpyne 13y agoUnanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion. Myriad kind of still wins as their cDNA synthesis technique is affirmed patentable, which would presumably be used in conjunction with a patient's own BRCA genes to determine their cancer risk. So the precise test itself appears patented still, but now other companies can make use of the BRCA genes themselves, perhaps to develop other treatments that don't use the cDNA synthesis technique.
- jweese 13y agoJustice Scalia's concurrence, reproduced here in full: "I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature."
- rayiner 13y agoYou have to appreciate his dedication to rigor.
- wavefunction 13y agoHe's consistent, which is about the only nice thing I'd want to say about him.
- vaadu 13y agoYour ignorance is staggering. He voted that the police should not be permitted to take your DNA just because you were arrested. He voted that government should not be permitted to take your property and give it to another private entity because it will generate higher taxes. He voted that the police should not be permitted to enter your property with drug sniffing dogs without a warrant. He voted that authorities scanning a home with an infrared camera without a warrant constituted an unreasonable search.
- pessimizer 13y agoIf you conclude that those four votes mean that nobody can think that he's vile, you're the ignorant one.
- twoodfin 13y ago"Vile" is a pretty strong term, especially to use in a political context.
- shardling 13y agoIt's interesting that you just assume the OP would take your side on those issues. If literally everyone agreed, they would not be an issue. :) Completely orthogonally, sometimes people judge someone based on the intention behind their actions.
- tptacek 13y ago"Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members", said Scalia when the court found it unconstitutional to execute the profoundly mentally disabled. "If it were impossible for individual human beings (or groups of human beings) to act autonomously in effective pursuit of a common goal, the game of soccer would not exist", he said, when the court found it unconstitutional for the VMI to refuse admission to women. "This ruling will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed [...] The nation will live to regret what the court has done today" he said when the court held that Guantanamo detainees have the right to appeal their captivity to federal courts. "Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?" he said, under obvious circumstances. "Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" he said, in attempting to retain a law that criminalized same-sex relationships in Texas.
- dekhn 13y agocDNA occurs in nature (reverse transcriptase). In fact DNA intermediates with introns spliced can be reintegrated into the genome. Further, faulty viruses can acquire oncogenes (intron-splicted, mtuated versions of growth factors, like EGF and HER2/neu) and transfer them to other cells via cDNA intermediates. It's not hard to believe that nature has in fact passed BRCA cDNAs around via retroviral intermediates.
- dnautics 13y agoRT doesn't work that way, it requires a specific site near its target gene in order to make the DNA strand. There is off-target activity, but it is almost certainly vanishingly rare.
- dekhn 13y ago"almost certainly vanishingly rare event" * "incredibly high rate of reproduction of viruses" = almost certainty. See the first 4 chapters of "Biology of Cancer" by Weinberg.
- dnautics 13y agomolecular biology can deal with probabilities that are lower than 1/the number of particles in the universe.
- dekhn 13y agoagain, have you read "The Biology of Cancer", by Weinberg? There is strong evidence for what I'm saying.
- dekhn 13y agoFurther, I'm not sure what the relationship of probabilities to the number of particles in the universe is. The probability of any given sequence emitted by hmmer as the "highest probability" is tiny (often 10e-50 or better, and for very good matches, 10e-138). So what's your point?
- 1337biz 13y agoI am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. I wish more public officials would show this kind of honesty, esp. those voting on new laws and regulations. I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message.
- takluyver 13y ago> I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message. I suspect all too many of their constituents would be very happy to explain how they should vote on all sorts of matters. Getting peoples' opinions is the easy bit, working out which ones are worth listening to is the challenge. Maybe we should just go with the most prevalent opinion on any issue. But, besides the practical issues, we can all probably think of at least one issue where we think the majority of people have got it wrong. We'd like our reasons to be considered, not just our numbers.
- davidp 13y ago> "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" That is precisely the primary function of lobbyists, as distasteful as it sounds when that word is used. Many lobbyists also buy access, which is a separate problem. Can you imagine the disastrous mess Congress would create if they knew even _less_ than they already know about the areas they're legislating? This is why regulating lobbying is hard; at root it's just citizens speaking to elected leaders (again, until money gets involved).
- unmei 13y agoBut they surely don't have a patent on all cDNA synthesis techniques, especially given that that is a highly generic technique (it should fall under the "obvious from previous art" criteria). So other companies should be able to utilize a cDNA as well so long as they don't simply follow the Myriad protocol?
- jweese 13y agoI believe they just have a patent on these particular cDNA types, namely cDNA created from BRCA1 or BRCA2, and not on the well-known lab techniques for creating them.
- daughart 13y agoI believe you are correct here.
- mpyne 13y agoI don't know the details, I only browsed through the front matter/syllabus, and I've certainly not read the patent in question.
- tomku 13y agoTheir patent isn't on technique ("method" in the ruling), but on the actual cDNA sequence itself. As such, it's specific to the two BRCA genes. Of course, that just makes it even more ridiculous.
- unmei 13y agoI guess my question is, do they still have a patent on any BRCA1/2 cDNA or only that specifically created according to their method?
- tomku 13y agoAccording to the ruling, their patent specifies a sequence of nucleotides of cDNA independent of any method used to create them. I read that to mean that any BRCA1 or BRCA2 cDNA that matches that exact sequence would be infringing on Myriad's patent, regardless of how it was created.
- tocomment 13y agoBut there are ways of detecting BRCA mutations without cDNA right? What does 23andme use? Isn't that a chip based method? And straight genome sequencing which should be cheap enough in a few years is another way around it, no?
- dnautics 13y agoyeah, but no one uses cDNA synthesis to do genotyping anymore. They use genechips or direct sequencincg. Direct sequencing is NOT covered by the myriad patent; and genechips use such short DNA sequences that the 'intron' exception doesn't hold.
- chris_wot 13y agoYou can make synthetic DNA?!?
- archgoon 13y agoYes. This has been around for several decades. Furthermore, you can request companies on the internet to synthesize sequences for you and mail you the results. (First result from google) http://www.invitrogen.com/ http://www.invitrogen.com/ Wikipedia Article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gene_synthesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gene_synthesis
- bdg 13y agoYes. It's basically a really cool version of an ink jet printer powered by sugar. A few labs will print out your sequence, pack it into a dead cell, freeze it and ship it to you. Obviously there's more to it than this really simplified statement but that's what goes on at a high-level. There's a number of people writing software for projects to help anyone author synthetic DNA (see http://synbiota.ca/ http://synbiota.ca/ ) and start playing with this stuff, just as we do with makerbots or the PC revolution of yesteryear.
- quux 13y agoDarn, well there goes my plan to patent myself and require that my wife buy a license before she can bear my children.
- wslh 13y agoI imagine next generations paying the Monsanto(s) of synthetic DNA...
- rpledge 13y agoI think you would find a lot of competition that would be willing to provide the required service at zero cost.
- cwp 13y agoCopyright would be more appropriate there. Children could be considered derivative works, but I don't see how they could be patent infringement.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lsiebert 13y agoYou are a transformative work based on your dna anyway.
- pessimizer 13y agoYou're only licensing the patent from your parents anyway.
- JosephBrown 13y agoAn mRNA strand that is about to be translated into a protein has the introns removed, so how is the cDNA different enough from the naturally occurring mRNA other than it is a mirror image? Also, when did cDNA come to mean composite DNA instead of complementary DNA? This seems made up to imply some kind of invention instead of it just being the mirror image of the DNA molecule.
- rcthompson 13y agoIt doesn't matter that cDNA is similar to something found in nature. The fact is that DNA complementary to the mature spliced mRNA sequences of the BRCA1/2 genes does not exist in nature.
- dekhn 13y agowrong. this happens in retroviral transmission all the time.
- rcthompson 13y agoTo my knowledge, the BRCA1 mature mRNA sequence has not been shown to be reverse-transcribed during any part of the life cycle of any retrovirus.
- dekhn 13y agogiven that retroviruses are sloppy, basically any any all genes have at some time been reverse transcribed.
- rcthompson 13y agoTrue, but that's a tenuous argument. You can't prove that a particular gene has been reverse transcribed and that its cDNA is therefore a naturally-occurring product, unless that cDNA is essential to the virus' life cycle. To invalidate the patent, you would probably have to actually observe the natural reverse transcription of the complete sequence. In any case, the original point I was trying to make was that the natural occurrence of the mRNA does not make the cDNA a naturally occurring product.
- gridmaths 13y agosweeeet... sanity prevails!
- tocomment 13y agoDoes this mean we'll soon see 1000s more SNPs available from 23andme? What are the biggest new SNP's they can test for?
- daughart 13y agoIt absolutely should mean this. Maybe 23andme can be something more than a toy.
- furconit 13y agoPatents are silly !
- dnautics 13y agoI'm generally opposed to patents, but I think this decision is crazy. For starters, the patentability of a gene now depends on whether or not there's an intron in that gene? The isolated sequence doesn't exist as a molecule in nature, and the patent was a patent on that molecule. Should have been a straightforward "gene patents (the way they were done by myriad) are allowed". Keeping in mind, there are a ton of very facile ways of breaking such a gene patent. EDIT: Actually I'm completely opposed to patents. EDIT2: Here is a more detailed analysis - I didn't post it earlier since dreamhost was down. http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html
- daughart 13y agoThis decision affirms a previous decision that synthetic modifications to DNA sequences are patented - regardless of whether they have introns. You see, the ruling suggests that the act of creating a new synthetic, modified DNA molecule (in this case without introns) is patent-able. (Not a comment on your opinion about patents, only the part about patentability relying on introns.)
- dnautics 13y agocan you link to this previous decision?
- daughart 13y ago"In Chakrabarty, scientists added four plasmids to a bacte- rium, which enabled it to break down various components of crude oil. 447 U. S., at 305, and n. 1. The Court held that the modified bacterium was patentable." Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U. S. 303, 309 (1980), If I am reading this correctly. EDIT: Sorry I re-read my original comment - I meant "synthetic modifications", not necessarily only to DNA, but to natural products in general.
- dnautics 13y agoI think I was confused because you meant "patentable", not "patented". But is not isolation by PCR a synthetic modification? If I made a useful machine out of a single piece of wood using a six-axis subtractive tooling device, would you argue that the machine is unpatentable because "it was already there"? PCR actually goes even further - conceptually it's subtractive procedure but it actually does so by creating copies within the specific boundaries. These boundaries don't exist in nature, the act of specifying the boundaries is creative, and without the prior research, non-obvious.
- RabbitAngstrom 13y agoA co-worker in my lab pointed out that Myriad's stock is actually rising[1] after the decision.The best guess is that Myriad's competitive advantage is shifting to the enormous amounts of BRCA sequences they have obtained -- this would increase the cancer-vs-normal mutation prediction power considerably. [1] - http://www.google.com/finance?cid=658315 http://www.google.com/finance?cid=658315
- jfb 13y agoAlso, they now have legal certainty whereas before the decision there was a chance the whole kit and kaboodle would have been tossed out.
- michaelhoffman 13y agoNot anymore.
- benjamincburns 13y agoAt one point I heard that some farmers, who were unaware that their crops contained patented genetic modifications as a result of uncontrolled natural reproduction with other GM crops, were being sued by patent holders. Does this ruling weigh in on this scenario? It seems that inventions which copy themselves and masquerade in difficult/expensive to detect ways (see plant reproduction, airborne pollen) wasn't something foreseen by those who wrote our patent laws.
- jadyoyster 13y agoThis seems to be a myth: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-fi...
- takluyver 13y agoI think the patents there relate to the combination and use of genes, not the genes themselves, so it's not. The famous case about that didn't actually hinge on whether GM crops had turned up on a farm unexpectedly, but on whether the farmer had then deliberately selected seed from the GM plants to replant the next year's crop.
- rvkennedy 13y agoDoes this mean that someone born with synthetic DNA is guilty of infringement if they have children? Do they need to buy a licence to keep living? Perhaps as a compromise, the court can decide that they count as three fifths of a person.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- RabbitAngstrom 13y agoOnce you are born with synthetic DNA, is it not "existing in nature?" An interesting point, but cloning is not very popular among bioethicists.
- anonymfus 13y agoWhy cloning? In vitro fertilisation is common.
- RabbitAngstrom 13y agoIVF doesn't actually change the genetic makeup of the sperm or egg in question. To do so would create a genetically altered human.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rgbrenner 13y agoThe parents would have bought the license for their child when they agreed to have the DNA modified. By the time that child has children, the patent would have expired.
- andre 13y agoUnless they change that, and keep on extending it, as it has been done with copyrights.
- shmerl 13y agoIdiotic decision. DNA should not be patentable.
- daughart 13y agoWhat if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?
- shmerl 13y agoNo, I principally think than biosubstances should not be patentable. The fact that DNA was generated artificially doesn't make it somehow magically different from the natural one.
- daughart 13y agoWhat I'm referring to is not only synthesis (artificially generating), but design and engineering. This is substantively different than natural products, in that they are truly invented.
- ryusage 13y agoThe problem I have with it is that, in all cases, any synthetic DNA could exist in nature. We can't even verify with 100% certainty that any given sequence doesn't already exist in nature. If it doesn't exist already, it could in the future, naturally, through evolution.
- daughart 13y agoAs I pointed out to shmerl above, sequence space is very large, and in general sparsely populated. A functional gene product and regulatory sequence is often thousands of base pairs. 4^1000 = 10^600. There are only 10^80 molecules in the universe. So if you have done truly de novo design, you can be pretty sure it doesn't exist somewhere else by random chance. That being said, I think that even if you take a natural gene and modify it meaningfully - that should be patent-able. For instance, if you take an enzyme and engineer a version that doesn't degrade as readily, or has much better activity, that should be patent-able, don't you think? EDIT: There's a good deal of prior art regarding numbers. As for patenting molecules, we allow that all the time... drugs, compounds, etc. Because they are discovered as I describe above.
- alok-g 13y agoDo they allow patenting a DNA sequence specified by a regular expression or a grammar? Also, what happens if the synthetic DNA is later found to exist naturally?
- abitsios 13y agoThere's a new TV series that touches upon this - Orphan Black. ---- Spoilers, obviously ---- So they're clones, and they have a "special repeating marker" of some sorts. One of the clones is a biochemist, and she manages to decode it. Turns out, it is a copyright message covering those organisms and their biological offspring as property of X corporation. -------- Spooky, but wouldn't the message get diluted after reproduction?
- sageikosa 13y agoFrom what I understand, the likelihood of any cistron in the genetic code getting diluted is dependent on the sequence length compared to the overall length of the chromosome on which it can be found. However, since this is sci-fi, it may be possible that some of the genetic sequence is setup to actually alter the meiosis process and not perform any "crossing over" events in egg cell construction.
- akiselev 13y agoCan anyone with experience clarify this ruling? Is the SCOTUS saying that just because the specific cDNA strand doesn't exist in nature (as far as I know), then it is patentable? Correct me if I misunderstood the ruling, but it seems to be absolutely ridiculous. You could just automate the process of isolating genes, sequencing them and statistically identifying their mRNA strands, isolating them, and creating cDNA strands. I know this isn't technically "nonobvious" but if you can automate the process to the point where you have robots spitting out gene patents, then it's a pretty low bar.
- dnautics 13y agoThe process of making cDNA libraries (with and without robots) has long been solved. Usually in order to get a patent you need to prove "usefulness" which is not really automatable. And if you want to read my writeup (which is slightly geared toward explaining the biology from simple first principles, http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html)
- ChuckMcM 13y agoWhile its not a complete win I think this is an ok compromise. Clearly Myriad is going to be impacted as other people come up with ways to test for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes without infringing on their process, and it will make screening for these genes much less expensive. But it leaves open the question of "infringement" on cDNA when you aren't party to the creation. Specifically the guys who have GMO Wheat growing in their field in Oregon, if they didn't put it there, they didn't know it had become GMO, and it was only discovered when Japan tested it, then what is their liability? And what is Monsanto's? (GMO Wheat isn't approved) I suspect these "escapes" of cDNA will become more common and the "factories" producing them, things like e.coli and algae, won't really respect the owner's rights here. :-)
- cantankerous 13y agoThis should give Myriad a new incentive to develop less expensive tests for this gene. They should already have a head start.
- HarryHirsch 13y agocDNA synthesis is very cheap, a few cents per base. They do like everyone else: charge whatever the market will bear, and, quite frankly, in healthcare this isn't something anyone should be comfortable with.
- andre 13y agoRelevant: Idaho farmers sue Monsanto over GMO wheat http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/06/12/2613756/idaho-farmers-sue-monsanto-over.html http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/06/12/2613756/idaho-farme...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- carbocation 13y agoI do not see how there is any cDNA involved in a plant that has modified genes. Are you assuming that the plant is infected with a retrovirus? A genome with a modified gene is not cDNA, and I'm not sure how to parse your comment so I'm basically trying to see if there was an error in your comment or an error in my reading of it.
- craigyk 13y agoWhile the second part is a bit disappointing. Does that mean if you manage to successfully isolate a natural version of a patented cDNA, then that patent becomes effectively invalid? In practice this might not be the hardest thing to do. Do you like someone's engineered version of a gene? Then transform some randomized libraries into cell cultures (or add mutagens) and keep fishing until you extract a "natural" copy that is the same as the patented cDNA.
- eldude 13y agoMichael Crichton's novel "Next"[1] was a fantastic exploration of the implications of such issues being brought up here like: liability when the infringing patents are in you, in animals, in human-animal hybrids capable of human-level intelligence, and how the world deals with life when Man plays god. Another excellent book on the ethics of bio-engineering and patentability is the true story, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."[2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel) [2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1...
- albertzeyer 13y agoIsn't all synthetic DNA based on natural DNA?
- bdg 13y agoNo. Natural DNA occurs in nature, much like a the alignment of magnetic fields may occur in some metals. Synthetic DNA has been designed by someone who sat down and said "Okay, today we're going to write DNA, it's sequence will be ACGTTTGACGTACGTTCAGTG....." and we're going to mix our newly designed gene into a larger natural DNA strand and this synthetic gene inside of the DNA will make this tree glow a very slight yellow-tinge, then we're going to sell that on kickstarter. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plan... (the only reason they're using a larger DNA strand is a full strand might cost in the range of $100b-$1t presently) This is not the same as what's been done more frequently for the last long while which was dissecting existing genes from other DNA strands (lets say gene XYZ from a starfish) and introducing it into a bacteria. Also, this doesn't mean I agree with the new law. I think this motion is even more nonsensical than software patents we face today, and has already handed off all the wonderful innovations that the synthetic biology revolution has to offer to a nation who's pumping loads of cash into this sector: China.
- acqq 13y agohttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/the-supreme-court-s-bad-science-on-gene-patents.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/the-supreme-court-s... it is not the scientists who removed the introns from the officially unpatentable original DNA sequence to make the new, patentable cDNA sequence. It is nature itself, through the magic by which pre-RNA, which includes the introns, becomes messenger RNA, which does not. The Supreme Court described this process by saying, “the pre-RNA is then naturally ‘spliced’ by the physical removal of the introns” -- that is, the introns are removed as part of the ordinary process by which messenger RNA is created. The role scientists then subsequently play is to take the messenger RNA and use it to synthesize the intron-free cDNA. To put it much more simply, there is nothing that a 6-year-old would consider “invented” about the patentable cDNA. It is nothing more than the messenger RNA flipped into a DNA sequence that omits unnecessary elements that nature already excluded. The sequence that codes the proteins is just as naturally occurring as the original DNA itself, which the court held couldn’t be patented because it was naturally occurring. The distinction is, to put it bluntly, a lawyer’s distinction, not a scientist’s. (by Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard)
- daughart 13y agoFrom what I understand, Myriad's test involved synthesis of cDNA (which we scientists refer to as "complementary DNA", not "composite DNA" as SCOTUS does). This is still covered by the patent. However, any test based on sequencing the genomic DNA, for example, would not violate Myriad's patent. Genomic sequencing of these genes was previously a violation of the patent. This is definitely a step forward. In the long run, Myriad is hosed because they no longer own the sequence, including analysis. Any diagnostic not using reverse transcription of the mRNA does not violate Myriad's patent. This includes synthesis of any non-cDNA polymer, such as XNA.
- alsocasey 13y agoThe issue is that a hypothetical diagnostic attempting to sequence this region would likely be pre-processed with a PCR to facilitate sequencing of only the region of interest... this necessarily involves a cDNA step. You could sequence the whole genome at higher depth, but this would be more expensive. Edit: My mistake, the patent covers the reverse transcription step exclusively, not the act of transcription in general - which means PCR from genomic DNA is fine, but rtPCR or cDNA library construction is not... no scientific consistency there, but looks like cheaper BCRA tests in the near future.
- daughart 13y agoThis sets the stage for a simple way to overturn any cDNA patent. Somewhere in the body of any person infected with a retrovirus such as HIV exists a completely natural molecule of BRCA1 cDNA.
- dnautics 13y agoI'm pretty sure prior art doesn't work that way.
- daughart 13y agoIsn't the standard here whether or not these molecules exist in nature? Honest question.
- dnautics 13y agoYou can't just assert that it exists. You'd have to show that it exists.
- daughart 13y agoThat should be trivial, if you had a large sample and money for sequencing. The consensus in the listservs I'm on is that cDNA patentability will fall next because of these and other inconsistencies (cDNA existing in nature, being a non-natural transformation).
- dnautics 13y agoThat hinges on the definition of non-natural. Is a nuclear reactor non-natural? Are you sure? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor Just because you're using components that exist in nature that may come together and occasionally produce the result you want - when a human hand enters the picture to do it deliberately and get a controlled result, to gain a certain end, that's qualifies it as non-natural.
- 13y ago
- dnautics 13y agointeresting side effect - prokaryotic genes are basically unpatentable!!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- niels_olson 13y ago> The nucleotides that code for amino acids are “exons,” and those that do not are “introns.” Should read "the nucleotide sequences". If they can't get the definitions right, why is the rest of the opinion valid? Is it time for a "Court of Science" at the district or appellate level?
- niels_olson 13y agoWhat if your life is saved from the debilitating effects of an enzyme deficiency by a virally-delivered sequence which also infects your spermatocytes (1)? And that sequence is passed to your child? (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_immunology#The_effects_of_infections_and_immune_responses_on_the_testis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_immunology#The_effec...
- pencouch6000 13y agocDNA is not used for most of the genetic tests (it was back in the day, not anymore). A lot of companies like Ambrygen and GeneDX use gDNA(genomic...i.e naturally occurring) to report the mutations. Hence, its a huge victory.
- caycep 13y agoKind of wondering, did Clarence Thomas actually write this, or did it fall to some young law clerk that had to take a crash course on molecular genetics?
- frozenport 13y agoI can live with this: As a general rule of thumb nature isolated is not patentable, Synthetic is.
- Fuxy 13y agoYes! Finally some forward progress. Still needs work though.