Wondser how long it will take for lobbyists to convince Congress to pass laws making it possible to patent genes?
Not likely. First, the decision allows new genes to be patented, just not ones found in nature. Second, the sound bite against a representative let a company patent a part of a voter would be quite powerful.
Anyhow, such a law might be unconstitutional, since patents cannot apply to things found in nature, but rather to invented things.
Since the patent restricted the ability of other companies to develop other tests which might be less expensive and restricted competition, it is possible that some people died because they couldn’t afford to get tested. Which is far different from a case of murder.
Except, of course, for patent leather.
I think we’re talking about two different things. The company’s monopoly prevented other companies from developing rival tests. It did not prevent any patients from taking its test.
Unless they couldn’t afford to pay for the test. And with no other companies legally allowed to devise competing test methodologies, Myriad was facing little pressure to lower their test cost.
Not murder - but not desirable, either.
Very good news!
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How so would such a law be unconstitutional.
It is possible that women who might have gotten the test and chose breast amputation might have died as a result. Hard to prove but possible. It was pointed out that Angelina Jolie could easily afford the $3000 cost, but many women couldn’t. On the other hand, while corporations seem to have the same rights as people, they obviously don’t have the same responsibilities. So the behave exactly as people would if they had rights only.
I am happy with the decision made.
My questions are regarding who spent money to map the genome, and should people who benefit from this costly information have to share some of that cost. I’m still happy about the decision made.
I am glad that some sort of rationality might some day return to the field of IP law. Perhaps one day the Federal Circuit might be abolished. Or reformed.
Its interesting, but the most cited overseas US court is not SCOTUS, but the Federal Circuit.
The Human Genome Project was primarily publicly funded. That’s sort of the curx with many issues in scientific research, a lot of discoveries are made by collaborating and sharing information between researchers. Most of this starts at the foundation level with government grants. A private firm, Celera, threw their hat into the Human Genome race, intending to proceed faster than the publicly funded researchers, which made the race to complete the mapping more competitive, but a big source of conflict arose when Celera used the publicly compiled information, but then refused to share their own.
The BRCA genes, their location on chromosome 13 and 17 and their relationship to breast and ovarian cancer were discovered by scientists working at publicly funded institutions, and by establishing the International Breast Cancer Linkage Consortium (BCLC), they shared this information with other members. What really pushed Myriad to the front was their access to the Utah Population Database, which used Mormon genealogical information to track diseases in family lines. Again, this database is considered public, though the University of Utah controls access. During the ‘gold rush’ of gene patenting in the early 90’s, pre-internet, a researcher at the University of Utah used this database to fully sequence BRCA 1&2 and many of it’s mutations. This scientist later went on to start Myriad and cultivate private investors, but the discovery was made at the University of Utah, using what is generally considered a public database.
When discoveries are made using a combination of public and private funds who “owns” that information? Many people believe scientific discoveries belong in the public domain, but applications of that knowledge used to invent something new are what is private and patentable.