Legal News

Court Shoots Down Patents on Two Human Gene Sequences

By Ashby Jones

Late last year, the WSJ’s Nathan Koppel, in this article, asked whether gene sequences deserve patent protection. The article served as a curtain-raiser of sorts to a decision pending out of the courtroom of New York federal judge Robert Sweet, who was weighing whether to give patent protection to two gene sequences “owned” by Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah Research Foundation that had been linked to hereditary cancers.

On Monday, Judge Sweet answered the question: no. Judge Sweet struck down some of Myriad’s patents on the two sequences. Click here for the opinion; here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for the American Lawyer story.

Judge Sweet ruled that some of Myriad’s patents were invalid because they related to isolated DNA “found in nature,” and therefore weren’t subject to patent protection. As a lone district-court ruling, Sweet’s doesn’t bind other federal courts, and other judges may or may not adopt the decision in similar cases. That said, the NYT’s John Schwartz and Andrew Pollack note that the ruling, if upheld, “could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property.”

Other companies that rely on gene patents are likely to follow developments closely. One could be PGxHealth, a division of Massachusetts-based Clinical Data, which offers genetic tests for inherited cardiac conditions, including one called long-QT syndrome, for which they have an exclusive license. The company declined to comment.

“There is an endless amount of information on genes that begs for further discovery, and gene patents put up unacceptable barriers to the free exchange of ideas,” said Chris Hansen, a staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. The group had challenged the patentability of the sequences.

Peter Meldrum, Myriad’s chief executive, said the company will appeal. “I don’t believe that the final outcome of this litigation will have a material impact on Myriad’s operations,” he said. “We have 23 patents relating to BRCA genes, and this litigation only involves seven of those 23 patents.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 30, 2010 (boomark / email).