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Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#41

Post by dnautics »

epistasis wrote: post #22
_delirium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand the situation correctly, it seems fairly similar to the status quo with drugs, for better or worse. You can't patent chemicals naturally occurring in plants that have medicinal uses, but you can patent synthetic versions of the same drug.

I think you do understand it correctly, but I find it very disturbing. The difference between these two situations is night and day: the complete synthesis of naturally occurring small molecules is unique each time, and can require dozens of PhD-level chemists and a decade or more to complete, if it's even possible. It requires a huge amount of invention, and a huge amount of discovery. Making cDNA is a standard kit,…

So, I have a background in chemistry and molecular biology and I take the exact opposite opinion - there's no categorical difference between the total synthesis and PCR. There are total syntheses that are straightforward - and the synthesis of most commercial drugs are usually very straightforward (for obvious economical reasons). And (rarely) you can have dastardly PCR reactions that refuse to work except under highly fine-tuned conditions that for long periods of time unexplainably work in the hands of only one researcher.

Ease is not the question by which a patent is judged. When you do a PCR reaction, introns or not, you are creating a NEW molecule that didn't exist before. Period. If the judges are claiming that the "information content" is what counts, then that goes against the molecule-patenting precedent - it's really the "molecular identity" which should count.

Now, my preference is to not allow patenting - at all - but to be consistent with the existing patenting landscape, they should have allowed the myriad patents (except for the "method" of comparing a patient sequence with the reference sequence) to pass.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#42

Post by dnautics »

alexholehouse wrote: post #17
_delirium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand the situation correctly, it seems fairly similar to the status quo with drugs, for better or worse. You can't patent chemicals naturally occurring in plants that have medicinal uses, but you can patent synthetic versions of the same drug.

So I'm not super familiar with drug patent laws - can those synthetic version and naturally occurring version be identical (as in chemically) or does the natural one need to be subtly different (e.g. extra methyl group, or whatever)?

depends on the patent. Usually a drug patent will claim "molecule scaffold with substitutents X can be {list of substituents}, Y can be {list of substitutents}". Then they will claim a very broad list substituents. It may not always be enforceable, if you can claim that your derivative substituent is "non-obvious" but most people won't bother because the litgation will be a PITA.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#43

Post by superkamiguru »

Does anyone else feel like there should be a different procedure when the court isn't an expert on the fields in question that our brought up to them? I'm not even sure how to standardize that. Just that I feel like there is an issue how scientific rulings are made.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#44

Post by andylei »

clarkmoody wrote: post #2

Interesting contrast to the patenting of crop genes by Monsanto: their crop cross-pollinates with yours, and now they own the seeds of your crop! It's a good thing that the SC struck this down, since it could lead to really weird claims over humans. Imagine if someone receiving patented genes in a treatment absorbed some of that information into their own genetic makeup. Then when they had children, the company could…

> Interesting contrast to the patenting of crop genes by Monsanto: their crop cross-pollinates with yours, and now they own the seeds of your crop!

no court has ever ruled this.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#45

Post by dpratt »

exit wrote: post #28
dpratt wrote: post #27

This is just me being pedantic, but I want one exception to this - every person, upon birth, should receive an automatic instantaneous patent on their own genome (and only their own genome) that is valid for the lifetime of the owner. I should be free to be able to sell this patent, but upon first sale, the patent expiration rules change to the default.

can you explain why? patents incentivize innovation (supposedly). no one invents their own genes. if someone wins the genetic lottery and has a gene that confers immunity to X, they get to monopolize the distribution of that immunity? why?

This raises a good point - perhaps I'm not looking for a patent, but rather a copyright. My goal is to ensure that the only legal owner of my particular genome is myself, and thus I can authorize who can possess a copy of it and issue 'licenses'. In fact, the more I think about it, the concept of patenting a particular genetic code is akin to patenting the contents of a book; it just doesn't apply.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#47

Post by epistasis »

dnautics wrote: post #41
epistasis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you do understand it correctly, but I find it very disturbing. The difference between these two situations is night and day: the complete synthesis of naturally occurring small molecules is unique each time, and can require dozens of PhD-level chemists and a decade or more to complete, if it's even possible. It requires a huge amount of invention, and a huge amount of discovery. Making cDNA is a standard kit,…

So, I have a background in chemistry and molecular biology and I take the exact opposite opinion - there's no categorical difference between the total synthesis and PCR. There are total syntheses that are straightforward - and the synthesis of most commercial drugs are usually very straightforward (for obvious economical reasons). And (rarely) you can have dastardly PCR reactions that refuse to work except under high…

>but to be consistent with the existing patenting landscape, they should have allowed the myriad patents (except for the "method" of comparing a patient sequence with the reference sequence) to pass.

You are completely right that the biological molecules could be considered identical to small chemical molecules, and that trivial chemical manufacturing steps could be patented; I do not do synthesis but all the synthetic organic chemists I know are pursuing incredibly complex and difficult procedures that are not on the same playing field as any PCR reaction, and I did not know that simple and straightforward techniques could be patented (which would seem to be counter to the "person skilled in the art" bar that's commonly used for patents, but I am not a synthetic chemist).

However, and I may be completely out of line, I think that the most important thing with patent law is to go for maximum utility as opposed to maximum consistency. Patent law is legal invention intended to maximize innovation and advancement, there is no underlying need for consistency in different realms. The biological and chemical realms have completely different monetization strategies, and it would make sense for the IP realms to be different, just as there are completely different standards for patents of composition, methods and systems. If somebody is using cDNA of a particular gene as a therapy and selling that compound, I could see that being patentable. However, I can't see patents of cDNA for diagnostic purposes being patentable; there the cDNA patent blocks any innovation on the interesting part, the analysis of information.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#48

Post by dnautics »

epistasis wrote: post #47
dnautics wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I have a background in chemistry and molecular biology and I take the exact opposite opinion - there's no categorical difference between the total synthesis and PCR. There are total syntheses that are straightforward - and the synthesis of most commercial drugs are usually very straightforward (for obvious economical reasons). And (rarely) you can have dastardly PCR reactions that refuse to work except under high…

>but to be consistent with the existing patenting landscape, they should have allowed the myriad patents (except for the "method" of comparing a patient sequence with the reference sequence) to pass. You are completely right that the biological molecules could be considered identical to small chemical molecules, and that trivial chemical manufacturing steps could be patented; I do not do synthesis but all the synthet…

a method patent generally should not be "simple and straighforward" (but there are always things like "patent on a method to swing on a swing"). But molecule patents are not method patents.

Furthermore, what constitutes a "trivial chemical manufacturing step" is not really appropriate for a legal decision. Even if step 12 in the synthesis is obvious, is it trivial to decide to use a 500 L batch fed reactor with piping radius X, with a copper pipe, and chiller unit Z for step 12? But in the molecule patents, the steps to synthesis are not necessarily relevant. All that is claimed is the structure of the molecule.

"all the synthetic organic chemists I know are pursuing incredibly complex and difficult procedures"

Keep in mind that the pursuit of complex and difficult procedures (or, really, the molecules that lead to them) is the essential purpose of synthetic organic chemistry in academia, and industrial chemistry is a very, very different beast. Those easy reactions that you learned in your intro ochem class textbook (SNs, Es, Aryl substitutions, halogenations, nitrations, carbonyl chemistry...) it's really those reactions that dominate industrial chemistry - for several reasons - they don't require exotic conditions (extreme cold, extreme hot) - they aren't super exothermic - that's a huge problem when you scale to 500 L you don't want your reaction chamber to turn into a bomb - they have been around for decades so optimization techniques are well characterized - they have been around for decades so regulatory approval is simpler.

But all of this is moot, because the patenting of a molecule doesn't generally hing on the process.

Consider - if you had a Drexler-like nanomachine that could 3d-print a molecular structure on demand, such that chemistry would essentially become "kit-ified" in the same way that molecular biology is, should then chemical patents then be invalidated?

"Patent law is legal invention intended to maximize innovation and advancement, there is no underlying need for consistency in different realms. The biological and chemical realms have completely different monetization strategies, and it would make sense for the IP realms to be different, just as there are completely different standards for patents of composition, methods and systems."

That is generally supposed to be for congress to decide, not the courts.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#49

Post by molbioguy »

I don't get the cDNA part of the ruling. If the spliced message exists naturally, and it must in order to be expressed, how does a DNA copy of that spliced message represent something novel whereas the full unspliced gene does not. After all most cDNA is initially generated from a naturally occurring template in the cell, since you're looking for what's naturally expressed.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#50

Post by aspensmonster »

Not patentable:

1111000010101010

Patentable:

0000111101010101

But don't worry, it's OK because you're only patenting the XOR of the original information string with a string of one's, not the original string itself. That's _clearly_ different. Someone please come in here and tell me why I've got this all backwards and this isn't actually a disaster built on an intellectually dishonest distinction without a difference. I'm not a biologist nor lawyer nor judge by any means, but this is what the ruling looks like to me.

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