Supreme Court: You Can’t Patent Our Genes!
In the case of Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, brought by the ACLU, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled on this day that it was unconstitutional for a private company to patent a human gene which is a “product of nature.”
The company Myriad Genetics had isolated DNA sequences and claimed a patent on them for purposes of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
In addition to the principle that a product of nature cannot be patentable simply because a private company discovered or isolated it, the Court held that such patents would inhibit scientific research. The decision did not apply to the scientific application of the knowledge involved in the isolation of a DNA sequence.
The Court: “‘Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable’ . . . Rather, ‘they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work’ that lie beyond the domain of patent protection . . . As the Court has explained, without this exception, there would be considerable danger that the grant of patents would ‘tie up’ the use of such tools and thereby ‘inhibit future innovation premised upon them.’ This would be at odds with the very point of patents, which exist to promote creation . . . (Products of nature are not created, and ‘manifestations . . . of nature [are] free to all men and reserved exclusively to none’).”
Learn more about genetic patenting at the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/gene-patenting
Learn more from the Public Patent Foundation: http://www.pubpat.org/
Watch a panel discussion on genetic patenting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoatveD2g6U
Learn more about the issues in the case: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/12-398