16.06.2016 - 07:00 [ Techdirt ]

Supreme Court Strikes Down Gene Patents

(13.6.2013) Here‘s a bit of good news: the Supreme Court has effectively said you can‘t patent genes, though in typical Supreme Court fashion, it hedged a bit. Basically, they found that merely separating out naturally occurring DNA is not patentable, but that synthetically made „complementary DNA“ or (cDNA) can be patentable. This case has been going on for quite some time, involving a company called Myriad Genetics, which isolated two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, where mutations indicate a high likelihood of developing breast cancer.