Posts Tagged: "myriad genetics"

Patent-Ineligibility of Medical Diagnostics, Life Sciences Discoveries Arrests U.S. Progress

In a research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), evidence emerged that a higher expression of the GIRK1 protein in malignant tissue samples was linked to higher relapse and mortality rates in breast cancer patients who have gone through surgery. The novel use of the GIRK1 protein as a biomarker could have a great impact on breast cancer diagnostics and treatments and further research could yield more discovery on the interdependence of GIRK1 with other important biological pathways critical to cancer management… Unfortunately, discovery of GIRK1 as a biomarker for breast cancer diagnostics would run into 35 U.S.C. § 101, the basic threshold statute for determining patentability of subject matter, under the Supreme Court’s March 2012 ruling in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. In that case, the Court held that processes involving correlations between blood test results and patient health is not patent-eligible subject matter because the process incorporates laws of nature. This would seemingly render any processes involving the application of GIRK1 as a biomarker for breast cancer prognoses unpatentable as well as the expression of GIRK1 occurs naturally.

Naked Emperors: A Supreme Court Patent Tale

The idea that the Supreme Court is at all capable of understanding — let alone deciding — issues of a technical nature is ridiculous. Yet their individual and collective lack of knowledge hasn’t prevented them from reaching misguided decisions in a variety of cases. Like an Emperor without any clothes the Supreme Court seems blissfully ignorant of their own ignorance. Indeed, you would have to go out of your way to find nine less qualified people to decide issues of a technological nature.

Australia Court Says Isolated DNA Patent Eligible, Slams SCOTUS

On the very same day that the U.S. jobs report shows unexpectedly weak growth, the Federal Court of Australia issued a ruling directly opposite to the ruling rendered by the United States Supreme Court relative to gene patents. In Yvonne D’Arcy v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Federal Court of Australia ruled that Myriad’s claims to isolated DNA are patentable under the laws of Australia. That is the correct ruling, and it is the ruling the U.S. Supreme Court should have reached in Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. As the patent eligibility laws of the U.S. become increasingly inhospitable to high-tech innovative businesses we can expect more job losses and worse news for the U.S. economy on the horizon.

An Agency Responds: USPTO’s Challenge to Create Post-Myriad Examination Guidelines that Translate Supreme Court Decision into Day-to-Day Action

Written by David J. Kappos, former Director of the USPTO: “The language of the Myriad decision did not on its face mandate drastic, innovation-dampening action. The Supreme Court chose to narrowly decide the Myriad case, stating that a DNA segment merely “found” from nature without further human innovative intervention is not patentable subject matter… Indeed, the stakes are high – the decision and the USPTO’s interpretation may impact a number of industries that depend on patent protection to provide products, goods and services to the market and jobs to Americans, not to mention the future of life-saving medical discoveries. Of the over 300 drugs on the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List, fewer than a dozen were brought to market without having received patent protection. From the ibuprofen ubiquitous in the world’s medicine cabinets to breakthrough treatments for epidemics like the HIV-inhibitor AZT, the patent system has long played a pivotal role in global health.”

USPTO to Host Forum to Solicit Feedback on Guidance for Determining Subject Matter Eligibility of Claims Involving Laws of Nature, Natural Phenomena, and Natural Products

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will host a public forum on May 9, 2014 at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, to solicit feedback from organizations and individuals on its recent guidance memorandum for determining subject matter eligibility of claims reciting or involving laws of nature, natural phenomena, and natural products (Laws of Nature/Natural Products Guidance). The Laws of Nature/Natural Products Guidance implemented a new procedure to address changes in the law relating to subject matter eligibility in view of recent Supreme Court precedent.