[ Thanks to Jose_X
for this link. ]
“The big news yesterday, of course, was the district
court ruling that found that genes were unpatentable. The full
decision was over 150 pages, so I wanted to spend some time reading
through it. It’s mostly a really good ruling that makes a number of
important statements. Dan Vorhaus has a good post highlighting some
of the key points, including this particular sentence:“The identification of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequences is
unquestionably a valuable scientific achievement for which Myriad
deserves recognition, but that is not the same as concluding that
it is something for which they are entitled to a patent.“This is a point that often seems to get lost in this debate,
with patent system supporters assuming some sort of “sweat of the
brow” argument for patents: that hard work automatically deserves
protection. But that’s not how the patent system works, and it’s
good that the judge recognizes this.”