Supreme Court: No Patents For Natural DNA Sequences 214
ColdWetDog writes "The ongoing story of Myriad Genetics versus the rest of the world has come to an end. In a 9-0 decision, the US Supreme Court has decided that human genes cannot be patented.
From a brief Bloomberg article: 'Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said isolated DNA is a "product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated." At the same time, Thomas said synthetic molecules known as complementary DNA, or cDNA, can be patented because they require a significant amount of human manipulation to create.' Seems perfectly sane. Raw genes, the ones you find in nature are, wait for it — natural. Other bits of manipulated DNA / RNA / protein which take skill and time to create are potentially patentable. Oddly, Myriad Genetics stock actually rose on that information."
Adds reader the eric conspiracy: "The result for Myriad is that they still have protection for their test, however the decision also allows researchers to work with the DNA sequences that are predecessors to the cDNA used in the test." Here's an AP report on the ruling, as carried by the Washington Post.
Why is it odd? (Score:5, Interesting)
The court case is over and the result wasn't actually all that bad. Sure Myriad and their stock holders would much rather have complete patent rights to the whole thing, but they kept the protections on their actual asset and the court case is now final and decided. Hell even if they'd lost completely their stock probably would have gone up because at least the risk was gone.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:5, Insightful)
The result wasn't that bad, but the real question is "Why the fuck was this ever even an issue in the first place"?
Patents should be for creations, not discoveries.
The ONLY people who should be entitled to a patent on my genome is my parents, and even that is questionable.
Or, I could see a patent on genes being issued to either "God" or "The Universe", depending upon religous beliefs (or lack thereof).
But this case should have never even been allowed to waste the court's time.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:4, Funny)
Or, I could see a patent on genes being issued to either "God" or "The Universe", depending upon religous beliefs (or lack thereof).
Once again, I see people would rather ignore Pastafarianism than accept the objective evidence of its correctness.
I will note that DNA was obviously made by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in his image. Why else would the foundation of life be so noodley? Yet more evidence we are correct!
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Once again, I see people would rather ignore Pastafarianism than accept the objective evidence of its correctness.
I will note that DNA was obviously made by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in his image. Why else would the foundation of life be so noodley? Yet more evidence we are correct!
Oh, you religious nuts are all the same, twisting the evidence to reinforce your own nonsensical beliefs. If DNA were really the creation of some mythical Pasta, how do you explain the disparity between the portion of double helical pastas and the portion of double helical DNA? Or more to the point, where are the single helix based lifeforms, modeled in His noodley image?
No, if the latest findings from the field of theoretical physics are to be considered, the best evidence is for some form of six sided god
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Ramen brother. Ramen.
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To the mods:
"Ramen" is pastafarian version of "amen"
Get a sense of humor.
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Anyone thinking DNA should be patentable has a twisted mind.
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Aren't all creations just discoveries on how to do something a particular way?
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Discovering a new way of putting things together == patentable
Discovering something that already exists == not patentable
It doesn't matter if it's nature or prior art: if it already exists, is shouldn't be covered by a patent.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:5, Funny)
The ONLY people who should be entitled to a patent on my genome is my parents, and even that is questionable.
It's probably much too late for your parents to claim a patent. If they're anything like my parents you (the invention) were publicly disclosed long before you were even born. The method used for your creation is also widely known, with an entire industry devoted to educational videos documenting many examples of the process and it's variations.
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Patents should be for creations, not discoveries. The ONLY people who should be entitled to a patent on my genome is my parents, and even that is questionable.
But what if someone created/discovered a gene you have before your parents did? In patent law (unlike copyright), independent creation/discovery is not a defense. All that matters is who was first. This means that protections against DNA patents need to be based on a stronger line of reasoning.
what if it's the only way to read it? (Score:2)
what if it's the only way to read it? doesn't this refer that the middle product in the test is patented?
wouldn't it be more apt that the methods - machinery etc and how they're used - involved in the test was under patent and not some molecyles.
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That empowers Congress to create laws defining these things. Whether Congress can grant patents to discoveries is separate. Current law as defined by Congress, does not.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:4, Insightful)
That empowers Congress to create laws defining these things. Whether Congress can grant patents to discoveries is separate. Current law as defined by Congress, does not.
That's not exactly true.
Discoveries can be and are patented all the time. And its perfectly legal according to the constitution and current law.
You may not thinks so, but that is just a testament to how few novel discoveries are actually made in the modern world, and how few of them can actually be incorporated into new and novel inventions. The most common discoveries patented today deal with process patents, ways of doing or making something.
The issue in the present case, is that Myriad tried to not only patent their process and the resultant treatment, but to claim ownership of something that is in every persons's body. You can patent false teeth, or the method of making them. You can't patent MY teeth. Myriad simply over-reached.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Why is it odd? (Score:2, Informative)
They said may be patentable. Naturally occuring cDNA falls under the original ruling which stipulated human modification is a requirement for patent eligibility.
Re: Why is it odd? (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume Myriad didn't invent cDNA... (Score:4, Interesting)
Right. The process for making a cDNA copy of a particular sequence is probably patentable. But I'm betting Myriad didn't invent that process. Whoever did should be able to patent it, and Myriad should have to pay them royalties for applying the process to the BRCA gene. And maybe something as general as cDNA construction should be a FRAND-type patent, so that it's owner can't 'own' all DNA by owning the standard testing methodology. Just like Motorola isn't allowed to own the cellphone industry by virtue of having come up with the standard communications protocol used by cellphones.
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Of all the days not to have mod points. Pretty much any genetic research starts by making a cDNA library. It's not that difficult; I think you can probably buy a kit to do it these days.
It's only a matter of time now until some researcher comes up with a different test for, or treatment of cancer linked to, this particular gene and Myriad's lawyers sue because they "must have" made use of the patented cDNA sequence in their research.
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Yeah, it's one of the easiest things to kit since it's just an extra step on top of PCR. All of the big vendors supply it.
Given that the patented sequence is literally a PCR assay for a handful of single-nucleotide mutations, it would be technically impossible to not use the sequence in question, so they can be certain that such a case would go forward. From the patent:
All four sequence variants are heterozygous and each appears in only one of the kindreds. Kinderd 2082 contains a nonsense mutation in exon 11 (FIG. 9A), Kindred 1910 contains a single nucleoting insertion in exon 20 (FIG. 9B), and Kindred 2099 contains a missense mutation in exon 21, resulting in a Met.fwdarw.Arg substitution. The frameshift and nonsense mutations are likely disruptive to the function of the BRCA1 product.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it's relatively easy to PCR up the sequence from the genome once you know what you're looking for.
Let me make an extended computer metaphor to explain this properly.
The human genome is comprised of many different types of information, which we can liken to pieces of text in different languages. Consider a case where we have a long document written in Russian that discusses source code for a program that was heavily commented—but in Greek. (For those of you following along in the lab, Russian is the untranscribed DNA, Greek is transcribed but noncoding, and the ASCII program itself is the coding sequence.) All of this is in UTF-32.
When the cell functions normally, it uses the program's source as a build script: it copies the code out of the document into CP-1253 (the Windows Greek code page), and then cuts out any remaining "??????" left by the transcription, as well as all of the Greek comments in the middle of the code. There are some comments at the start of the code and at the end, but most of the copy is the code itself.
In the Myriad case, they've found a program that works the other way, called reverse transcriptase. It turns the 8-bit Greek/ASCII mixture back into UTF-32, but the Russian and the intragenic comments are still gone, leaving us with a usable sequence that we can do a bitwise search comparison with. This is very convenient to do because there's already a complete set of such sequences available. These are called cDNA libraries, and we rely on them everyday to tell us where the Greek comments are.
What researchers will be forced to instead is to cut the sequences out by hand directly from the wide Unicode source, using a lab technique called PCR splicing. The stupid thing is that there's no chemical difference between the two—it would be impossible to prove one way or the other where the diagnostic sequence came from, unless you knew the sequence's history. It just means that researchers now have to fumble around with splicing a bit more. Presumably the only reason Myriad isn't crapping their pants is because they think they can litigate based on intent in such cases.
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Sorry, that was a bit of confusing language; I meant it to be read as "cDNA is a copy of the transcript."
And I think I have a better way of doing the metaphor than ROT13: different codepages. (Although the idea of ROT13 is apt to the physical reality, it's not really that important to the explanation.) Unicode genome, 8-bit transcripts, 7-bit ASCII proteins. Intergenic DNA is in Russian, transcribed RNA is in Greek, and RNA polymerase converts things to a Greek codepage.
...the art of the car analogy is defi
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Wait, you mean the stock market is a complex system that isn't accurately described by a single "good news/bad news" model? But Slashdot has taught me that the easy and simplistic solution is always right!
Next you'll be telling me that a gold standard won't actually fix economic problems, or that Linux won't immediately replace Windows everywhere once it has $FEATURE... What madness is this?
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I wonder how much it costs to sue all the way to the Supreme Court. And lose.
Re:Why is it odd? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure Myriad and their stock holders would much rather have complete patent rights to the whole thing, but they kept the protections on their actual asset
If this is the case (and it probably is, hence the increased stock price), then the BRCA genes effectively remain patented in the US. Anyone 'skilled in the art' (like a grad student or junior technician) can trivially create 'artificial derivatives' of a known gene sequence (e.g. cDNA, as mentioned in the decision) just by 'designing' some primers (there's software to automate this), ordering them in (together with the relevant reagent kits), and following some step by step protocols. If this sort of thing is still patentable (as it seems to be), and Myriad is still the only provider allowed to offer a BRCA testing service, then the SC decision will make little practical difference for the moment - Myriad will still 'own' the genes if they are screened by standard methods. However, the decision might be good news for anyone using a 'next generation' sequencing approach, where relevant mutations are pulled out from (e.g.) a whole genome sequence (which isn't much more expensive than Myriad's price for targeted screening, and will be much cheaper in future):
http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2010/10/11/a-do-it-yourself-genomic-challenge-to-myriad-the-fda-and-the-future-of-genetic-tests/ [genomicslawreport.com]
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Myriad was claiming ownership of the entire Gene, any new tests to identify it using different methods or cDNA would be, according to Myriad, covered by the patent. What the supreme court decisions does is says that Myriad owns the specific cDNA they came up with. It may be even possible that different cDNA that accomplishes the same purpose would not run afoul of the patent and tests that didn't rely on the cDNA would be immune as well. This was an important decision because Myriad's claims had basically s
Be still, my heart! (Score:5, Funny)
A breath of IP sanity from SCOTUS? And unanimously at that?
Pinch me. Surely I dream.
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The unanimous part was the weird bit for me. Partly because they all agreed, and partly because I thought the kind of cases that would have unanimous decisions usually didn't make it to the SCOTUS.
Re:Be still, my heart! (Score:5, Informative)
Some reasons that you get unanimous SCOTUS decisions:
1. SCOTUS took the case primarily to send a strong message to current and future courts and legislatures and presidents. A lot of those kinds of decisions get handled at the circuit court level, but in future case law it's one thing to cite that the Ninth Circuit said this or the First Circuit said that, and it's another thing entirely to cite a unanimous decision by a fairly divided Supreme Court.
2. It can be a judicial smack-down when a circuit court gets something wildly wrong.
3. It could be that the Chief Justice wants to get everyone to speak with one voice on a particular issue. This usually causes decisions to take a while, as the Chief convinces the 4 holdouts to agree with the majority.
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The court is not "fairly divided". Something like 80% of their decisions are unanimous. You only hear press about the 5-4 decisions which are an extremely small proportion (about 10%).
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Still didn't stop the three letter agencies from GPS tracking our, and their, phones.
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Large databases is all the NSA really needs.
Re:Be still, my heart! (Score:5, Funny)
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A breath of IP sanity from SCOTUS? And unanimously at that?
Indeed.
Even the good recent decisions are uncomfortably often a 5-4 split (meaning that we could be one retirement away from flipping them). That thought disturbs me...
Re:Be still, my heart! (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't good enough. Creating cDNA is not a creative act. Extract RNA, apply a reverse transcriptase. Now you have cDNA. The sequence of the cDNA(and the protein product it codes for) is 100% determined by the sequence of the RNA, which is a natural product.
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Re:Be still, my heart! (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a form of copyright may be more appropriate there than patent.
Oh hell no! Since copyright is DeFacto forever thanks to the MickyMouse Copyright Extension Act it would be MUCH worse if they could be granted a copyright on genes.
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Identifying particular cDNA that can be used for therapeutic purposes is a whole other thing and requires a lot of research.
Identifying a particular gene or piece of mRNA that can be used for theraputic purposes requires a lot of research too. This has nothing to do with whether that gene, mRNA, or cDNA is a "natural product" or not.
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The "particular form" is irrelevant. It's the same sequence whether it's mRNA or cDNA. You might as well allow people to copyright public domain works by doing a ROT13 transformation.
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Re:Be still, my heart! (Score:4, Insightful)
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> Creating cDNA is not a creative act.
Umm your sentence is self-contradictory.
Not Exactly Unanimous (Score:3)
Mostly Unanimous. Justice Scalia wrote a brief concurrence that, depending on how it read, suggests he doesn't believe in molecular biology. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he is just trying to say that SCOTUS should avoid pronouncing scientific facts in binding legal opinions.
JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in
nature.
The market works on expectations (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly, Myriad Genetics stock actually rose on that information.
That's not really surprising. All that means is that the market expected the news to be worse than it actually was. Once the ruling was handed down and the uncertainty removed, the stock rebounds based on the new information. You'll see this all the time where a company has a terrible quarter and their stock price goes up because while it was indeed terrible, it wasn't as terrible as expected.
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Ah yes. Thanks. I keep trying to apply rationality to the stock market.
You'd think I would have learned by now.
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New information vs expectations (Score:3)
Everyone knew this case was at the SCOTUS, and everyone knew that patenting something that occurs naturally was not what patent law was supposed to do.
There is NEVER certainty regarding a SCOTUS ruling. Expectations cover a spectrum and not everyone makes the same bet. SCOTUS could have ruled in such a way that this company lost their patent protection altogether which appears to not have happened. Just because what you outlined is the most likely outcome does not mean it is the only possible outcome. Some people were clearly betting on other, more pessimistic, outcomes than the one that actually occurred. It's pretty much the same thing as betting o
Markets are chaotic and (usually) rational (Score:4, Informative)
Ah yes. Thanks. I keep trying to apply rationality to the stock market.
It is extremely rational behavior. Think of it like playing a poker hand. You have imperfect information so you make your bets based on the likelihoods of various results. Some results are more likely that others and you play accordingly. As more information becomes available your betting strategy may change. That is exactly what is happening here.
One has to understand what is driving prices for the stock market to make any sense. Information about company performance is at the core but it is NOT what drives prices. There is no direct link between a company's financial performance and their stock price. What drives prices is peoples expectations and in some cases people's expectations about other people's expectations. (and even expectations about expectations about expectations... you can keep going) If you invest in the stock market you are placing a bet not so much on what a company will do but on what other people will think about the company. When you buy IBM stock you are saying in essence "I expect more people to find this valuable in the future". Any secondary market (stocks, baseball cards, tulips, real estate, etc) works this way. It's shockingly rational (with some exceptions) but highly chaotic and thus hard to predict.
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Absent a large shareholder making a major move in position you can't know what is driving the market on any day. It's an irrational and unpredictable well of emotion. Anyone that tells you differently is an idiot or trying to sell you something. The market and what drives it is a black box of emotion, those news stories that claim that X event is driving Y change are complete speculation.
Absent direct polling of all players in the market no one has any idea what is driving the market. That isn't to say you
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It was actually good news for Myriad, not just non-terrible news. While they did lose some parts of their patent, the core test is still protected.
In addition the way the decision was stated settles the entire field of biotech patents in such a way as to give certainty that there will be lots of opportunity for patentable inventions in the field, AND that R&D activities on isolated human DNA will be able to continue without threat of patent suits.
It isn't just Myriad stock that is up today. The stock ma
Wow (Score:3)
I am actually surprised by the ruling. I fully expected the courts to say you can patent anything, so long as you are first to file. Glad to hear it nonetheless.
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I am actually surprised by the ruling. I fully expected the courts to say you can patent anything, so long as you are first to file. Glad to hear it nonetheless.
I'd assume that you can, in fact, apply to patent anything; but one would hope that "Prior art older than human civilization, quite possibly older than humanity, depending on the DNA involved" would cause you problems...
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I suspect the mega-corporation with our government in their pockets have already thought this through. They will use big pharmy and gene therapy to get artificial dna sequences into your genome. Then they own your genetic ass anyway.
Laugh now, and just wait about 10 years....
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Oh, so that's what GMO organisms are for, so big business can own our ass (even more than they already do).
THIS MADE MY DAY!! (Score:3)
This is definitely call-everybody-I-know newsworthy! Holy cow! Gonna mark this day and celebrate it next year! I can't believe this is happening!
Re:THIS MADE MY DAY!! (Score:5, Funny)
Do you find you often get peoples' voicemail?
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Yes, but they call me back. :) I don't call people unless it's important. :)
Michael Crichton would be proud (Score:3)
Good job, SCOTUS
A thought experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
Have we sequenced every variant of every species?
Case in point, Monsato make GM crops that resist herbicides. What if the parts they are patenting, have analouges in some other plant in the wild?
Re:A thought experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
Then presumably they'd be overturned by prior art.
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Realistically, it goes back to court.
Re:A thought experiment (Score:4, Interesting)
! yep
We already know that's the case for antibiotics. And we know plants compete with one another by suppressing competitors' growth.
Seems to me Thomas's comment is intended to add a loophole -- "we created this cDNA and patented it, so we have the patent, so if you claim you found the exact same thing out there in nature somewhere, it must be you stole it from us." Betcha.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1215093 [nejm.org]
The Future of Antibiotics and Resistance
Brad Spellberg, M.D., John G. Bartlett, M.D., and David N. Gilbert, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2013; 368:299-302January 24, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1215093
----------------
"... after billions of years of evolution, microbes have most likely invented antibiotics against every biochemical target that can be attacked — and, of necessity, developed resistance mechanisms to protect all those biochemical targets. Indeed, widespread antibiotic resistance was recently discovered among bacteria found in underground caves that had been geologically isolated from the surface of the planet for 4 million years.2 Remarkably, resistance was found even to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the 20th century. These results underscore a critical reality: antibiotic resistance already exists, widely disseminated in nature, to drugs we have not yet invented.
"Thus, from the microbial perspective, all antibiotic targets are “old” targets...."
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If you find it you can use the natural form.
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What if a company makes and patents a cDNA that is later found to also exist naturally?
Have we sequenced every variant of every species?
Case in point, Monsato make GM crops that resist herbicides. What if the parts they are patenting, have analouges in some other plant in the wild?
Monsanto is, in part, doing exactly what you suggested. The genetic element that grants their crops resistance to glyphosate (Round-Up) was discovered in microbes growing in waste runoff containing glyphosate [nih.gov]. The patent is on the plants that have been transformed / engineered to contain this naturally occurring resistance gene in their genome and express it to garner resistance to the herbicide.
The cDNA argument is much worse to ludicrous. The only thing one could imagine is patentable surrounding the issu
Splitting the baby (Score:3)
This is really a great decision that benefits everyone, in the following ways.
1. Isolated DNA is not patentable. This allows R&D on DNA to proceed unencumbered.
2. Commercial development of technologies using synthetic DNA derivatives for useful products is encouraged by allowing patent coverage.
Who knew... (Score:2, Funny)
SCOTUS agrees unanimously on something? *Looks at the calendar* It's not April 1st... Am I being punked??
Good, because otherwise.... (Score:2)
I was planning to patent Sunshine.
Unanimous defeat of common sense (Score:2)
Can we take this further, please? (Score:2)
A good start (Score:2)
Naturally-occurring human genes is a narrowly defined set that isn't patentable, but still this will save many lives by allowing cheap genetic testing for things such as breast cancer susceptibility.
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is that Clarence Thomas said something (even writing an opinion). He's only been on the court, what, 10+ years or something?
Antonin Scalia's mind-meld field is vulnerable to disruption by sunspots, geomagnetic anomalies, and nearby homosexuals. Some mistakes are inevitable from time to time...
Re:The bigger news here... (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to the uninformed popular opinion, Clarence Thomas has been very active during his time on the court. He just mostly leaves questions in oral arguments to other judges, which is only a small part of what judges do. It used to be common for Justices to take that approach, but recently it stands out since the others have started to enjoy the sound of their own cleverness much more, whether it contributes to the resolution of a case or not.
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Judges also ask questions during oral arguments specifically to direct the subject or issues in a certain direction. For example, during the debate over Obama's health plan (PPACA), Scalia asked questions about the government forcing people to eat broccoli, while other justices asked questions about requiring car insurance payments.
Thomas is unusual because he almost never speaks, yet he clearly has a political bias. Back in January, he finally asked a question (or made a comment, no one is quite sure) for
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Oops, here's the link [washingtonpost.com].
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Perhaps you can explain this to me... what is the value of oral arguments at all?
The justices get vast piles of paper documents, extensive briefs, case histories, etc etc etc. The oral arguments are generally given only a single hour; if I remember correctly the PPACA was given a whopping afternoon. These are complex issues; a case doesn't reach the Supreme Court unless there is genuine disagreement among very high level legal minds. They will proceed to hash it out among themselves and with their clerks, f
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I wouldn't say there is no value as Justices may need to have a chance to clarify something etc. It is vastly overrated though and it is one of the reasons most Justices do not want cameras in court during oral arguments. As Scalia said, if the media is willing to follow all the relevant details of a case from beginning to end and devote a large amount of time to it (such as on CSPAN for example) then cameras would be fine, but just focusing all the attention on few soundbites and back and forth between jud
Re:The bigger news here... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is anything actually achieved by oral arguments? It seems mainly an opportunity for lawyers to get flustered, choose the wrong tack while thinking on their feet, be manipulated by the justices, and oversimplify.
These days, oral arguments tend to be a place for the justices to prod attorneys with particular questions. Often, it seems they do this with the intention of bringing up a point that might influence or accentuate an idea that could sway one of the other justices, rather than necessarily to clarify a question for themselves -- though, if they are really curious about a particular issue themselves, you can tell. They will keep cutting through the BS spouted by the attorney and hammer the same question until they get an answer. Maybe this is to prove a point to the other justices, but it can also be to assure themselves that they've gotten all possible perspectives on the question. Another common tactic in oral arguments is for the justices to pose interesting hypotheticals that they think may clarify the case, but which may not have been adequately addressed in briefs.
Is Thomas' silence really a comment on the fact that this is a waste of his, and everybody else's, time?
Actually, he's explicitly said why he doesn't talk. Oral arguments tend to be a lot of banter among the justices these days, but they used to let lawyers at least speak a little more. Thomas has said that he thinks his colleagues should give a little more room for attorneys to try to make points and bring up what they think is important.
I think he'd like to hear a little more and perhaps then ask questions relevant to the lawyers' points. But in the current court, we rarely ever get to hear a lawyer talk for more than 30 seconds on his/her own material before being interrupted. Thomas thinks this makes oral arguments more about the justices' preoccupations rather than what the lawyers think is important.
I can see his point. The justices get to debate each other and their clerks for hours on end about their preoccupations. Oral argument could be a place to get a few insights into the major concerns of the litigants, if we could ever hear them talk.
On the other hand, the justices will be the ones who ultimately decide things, so maybe it's best if they stick to the stuff that actually concerns them. It's just unfortunate when they start using lawyers as legal "punching bags," clearly only to drive home a point to one of the other justices.
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Re:The bigger news here... (Score:4, Informative)
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The reason the other justices ask a lot of questions is not because they want to hear themselves talk. They walk in there having already read the gist of what each lawyer is arguing in the briefs that were filed a long time ago. What they're usually after in oral argument is counsel's response to any issues the justices may have thought of that counsel did not, and those are the questions they typically pepper counsel with.
Re:The bigger news here... (Score:4, Informative)
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but it is well known fact that everything changes your DNA, even the food that you eat, could cause a change..
Put the comic books down.
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No. No more than the hundreds of patented products you have bought are owned by the patent holder. By providing you the cure, a hospital would be granting you a license to the end result. You own the result. But you might still face restrictions from providing the cure to others such as your descendents.
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Thanks to quantum mechanics, it's also fully possible for my entire body to randomly disintegrate over here, and reintegrate perfectly intact in your closet. That does not mean that someone who produces a machine for that should be denied patent protection... Unless, of course, the invention consists of a box holding a leprechaun, who have had the natural ability to teleport for thousands of years.
A "natural" gene would have been found in nature and isolated. The researchers don't really need to know how or
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This is entirely a reasonable opinion. Most jeans don't fit the average whale, and whales have no legs, so any jeans being worn by a whale would be more akin to a locust playing a fiddle on a 10-ft tall aquarium light bulb. Seriously, since a glittering gem is nothing at all, a absquatulatory prodigous profile would wake the prime minister.
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An old apple is omni-present, much like candy.
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possibly, but the next big question after that is ... can Monsanto sue nature?
Re:What about other genes? (Score:4, Interesting)
"the US Supreme Court has decided that human genes cannot be patented."
Does it means animals and plants DNA can be patented?
"Human genes cannot be patented" is an overly broad interpretation of the ruling.
To say that these "isolated segments of naturally occurring human genes cannot be patented" would be more correct.
In the case where an inventor creates nonnaturally occurring gene sequence with markedly different characteristics from anything occurring in nature, it is left open whether or not those are patentable.
Plant genes meeting these criteria have been held to be patentable. See Monsanto, for example. It is possible that animal genes, or even human genes that meet this criteria would be patentable.
Re:Supreme Court contradicts itself (Score:4, Informative)
The court on the one hand looked to the "information" contained in the isolated DNA sequence to say that it was a product of nature, and ignored the molecular changes due to cleaving the sequence from the chromosome.
On the other hand, with respect to cDNA, the court ignored the information similarity between mRNA and cDNA and instead looked at the molecular differences.
These two situations are distinguishable. The court said that Myriad does not "rely in any way on the chemical changes that result from the isolation of a particular section of DNA". (p 14) However, Myriad does rely on the chemical changes that distinguish cDNA from mRNA.
Thomas did not call the construction of cDNA "trivial".
Nowhere in nature do you find genes encoded in GATC sequences on a dioxyribose backbone with their introns removed.
Re:Supreme Court contradicts itself (Score:4, Interesting)
When a researcher makes cDNA from mRNA, is the result only "not found in nature" if the original genomic DNA had introns.
So as a result should all prokaryote-derived cDNA be unpatentable? Perhaps only certain cDNA from humans are patentable (from genes with introns)?
Yes, this is correct. Justice Thomas writes (at page 17 of the slip opinion): "As a result, cDNA is not a “product of nature” and is patent eligible under 101, except insofar as very short series of DNA may have no intervening introns to remove when creating cDNA. In that situation, a short strand of cDNA may be indistinguishable from natural DNA."