Darn, well there goes my plan to patent myself and require that my wife buy a license before she can bear my children.
I think you would find a lot of competition that would be willing to provide the required service at zero cost.
Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
11–20 of 174 posts
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#12Unanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion. Myriad kind of still wins as their cDNA synthesis technique is affirmed patentable, which would presumably be used in conjunction with a patient's own BRCA genes to determine their cancer risk. So the precise test itself appears patented still, but now other companies can make use of the BRCA genes themselves, perhaps to develop other t…
But they surely don't have a patent on all cDNA synthesis techniques, especially given that that is a highly generic technique (it should fall under the "obvious from previous art" criteria). So other companies should be able to utilize a cDNA as well so long as they don't simply follow the Myriad protocol?
I don't know the details, I only browsed through the front matter/syllabus, and I've certainly not read the patent in question.
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#13An mRNA strand that is about to be translated into a protein has the introns removed, so how is the cDNA different enough from the naturally occurring mRNA other than it is a mirror image?
Also, when did cDNA come to mean composite DNA instead of complementary DNA? This seems made up to imply some kind of invention instead of it just being the mirror image of the DNA molecule.
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#14sweeeet... sanity prevails!
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#15Unanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion. Myriad kind of still wins as their cDNA synthesis technique is affirmed patentable, which would presumably be used in conjunction with a patient's own BRCA genes to determine their cancer risk. So the precise test itself appears patented still, but now other companies can make use of the BRCA genes themselves, perhaps to develop other t…
But they surely don't have a patent on all cDNA synthesis techniques, especially given that that is a highly generic technique (it should fall under the "obvious from previous art" criteria). So other companies should be able to utilize a cDNA as well so long as they don't simply follow the Myriad protocol?
Their patent isn't on technique ("method" in the ruling), but on the actual cDNA sequence itself. As such, it's specific to the two BRCA genes.
Of course, that just makes it even more ridiculous.
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they surely don't have a patent on all cDNA synthesis techniques, especially given that that is a highly generic technique (it should fall under the "obvious from previous art" criteria). So other companies should be able to utilize a cDNA as well so long as they don't simply follow the Myriad protocol?
Their patent isn't on technique ("method" in the ruling), but on the actual cDNA sequence itself. As such, it's specific to the two BRCA genes. Of course, that just makes it even more ridiculous.
I guess my question is, do they still have a patent on any BRCA1/2 cDNA or only that specifically created according to their method?
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#17Unanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion. Myriad kind of still wins as their cDNA synthesis technique is affirmed patentable, which would presumably be used in conjunction with a patient's own BRCA genes to determine their cancer risk. So the precise test itself appears patented still, but now other companies can make use of the BRCA genes themselves, perhaps to develop other t…
But they surely don't have a patent on all cDNA synthesis techniques, especially given that that is a highly generic technique (it should fall under the "obvious from previous art" criteria). So other companies should be able to utilize a cDNA as well so long as they don't simply follow the Myriad protocol?
Yes, that's correct. Also, keep in mind:
"First, the case is only about whether genes are patentable subject matter; that is, are they the kinds of things that are eligible for patent protection under section 101 of the Patent Act, assuming that all other requirements for patentability are met. Even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of gene patents here, every gene patent would still have to pass the tests of novelty (section 102) and nonobviousness (section 103), and to be the subject of an adequately explicit written description (section 112)."
That's taken from this legal genomics blog: http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2013/05/01/some-t...
Highly recommend all of their articles if you are interested in this kind of thing.
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#18You can make synthetic DNA?!?
Yes. It's basically a really cool version of an ink jet printer powered by sugar. A few labs will print out your sequence, pack it into a dead cell, freeze it and ship it to you.
Obviously there's more to it than this really simplified statement but that's what goes on at a high-level. There's a number of people writing software for projects to help anyone author synthetic DNA (see http://synbiota.ca/ ) and start playing with this stuff, just as we do with makerbots or the PC revolution of yesteryear.
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#19Unanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion. Myriad kind of still wins as their cDNA synthesis technique is affirmed patentable, which would presumably be used in conjunction with a patient's own BRCA genes to determine their cancer risk. So the precise test itself appears patented still, but now other companies can make use of the BRCA genes themselves, perhaps to develop other t…
But there are ways of detecting BRCA mutations without cDNA right? What does 23andme use? Isn't that a chip based method? And straight genome sequencing which should be cheap enough in a few years is another way around it, no?
Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]
#20Does this mean we'll soon see 1000s more SNPs available from 23andme? What are the biggest new SNP's they can test for?