Supreme Court's ruled that Myriad Genetics' patent on naturally occurring genes was invalid, but upheld its patent on a synthetic DNA segment. You can fool around with genes and patent what you come up with, but you can't patent naturally occurring genes themselves. That, in layman's terms, is what the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled today in a decision that has broad implications for the biotechnology industry. The case involved patents by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc., which developed tests for breast and ovarian cancer from its discovery of the location and sequence of two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Myriad (MYGN) obtained several patents based on this discovery, including one for isolating a naturally occurring segment of DNA from the rest of the human genome. Read More
Authored by: Kent Hoover, Washington Bureau
