I'm aware that the claimed patent was on BRCA1/2 cDNA, and not a process. I can see how my references to process patents might have confused you, but if you ig

I'm aware that the claimed patent was on BRCA1/2 cDNA, and not a process. I can see how my references to process patents might have confused you, but if you ignore those asides, that should take care of your complaints. Your wooden machine is different from cDNA. cDNA is an obvious 1:1 mapping of something that already exists: mRNA. It's obvious because that's exactly what retroviruses do. (Ignoring here the negative vs positive sense distinction in viral RNA because it's irrelevant once the RNA is converted to double-stranded DNA.) If the gene information previously exists in nature, ALL equivalent forms (DNA, mRNA, cDNA, even tRNA) should be excluded from patentability, because they are beyond obvious once you know the nucleotide sequence, and they are equivalent (in terms of information theory). The equivalence (ignoring introns) of all forms of DNA and RNA is universally known (barring strange cases where DNA/RNA structure might interfere with transcription). Novel synthesis methods might be patentable. Novel enzymes that can translate between the forms, also might be patentable. But that's not this case. Often when something obvious or preexisting is patented, a retort is that while the thing may not be patentable, the process to create it might be. I was trying to head off that argument that Myriad might have something patentable here even if the cDNA itself is not patentable.