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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

#11

Post by B-Con »

tehwalrus wrote: post #6

It's ridiculous that a patent system exists that would allow someone to even try to patent the result of billions of years of evolution.

I think it's really the whole philosophical "create vs discover" thing. Only things that are created (with other restrictions) can be patented, things that are discovered cannot be.

The problem arises, when do you draw the line? When you spend thousands of man hours in a scientific lab and millions of dollars to piece together a bit of understanding, was it discovered or created?

The answer is often somewhat obvious. But I imagine that, behind closed (or semi-closed) doors, there are a lot of very persuasive people arguing for a very permissive definition of "create".

While it's probably hard to properly classify everything accurately the first time you see it, hopefully time lets us get a better perspective and quickly re-classify.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#12

Post by _delirium »

alexholehouse wrote: post #7

Yeah this is actually a pretty poor news source (hopefully it will be updated). For more comprehesive coverage info see http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/06/13/supreme-... A crucial point is the cDNA is patentable, which still makes very little sense.

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.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#15

Post by pdabbadabba »

aroch wrote: post #5
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…

I'm not entirely convinced this ruling is a win...making cDNA patentable is, from my view in academic research, not a good thing. I also don't understand why the Court is under the impression that cDNA is something magical that is synthesized originally by some complex thing (OK, it's complex but not groundbreaking and has been used for a long time now). cDNA is synthesized by reverse transcription of mRNA, which alr…

Well, the patent was not on the process of creating cDNA, it was on the product -- they patented the cDNA itself, not the process for creating it. It is a composition of matter patent. Therefore, the question to ask is whether the cDNA itself exists in nature, not whether the process for making it does.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#16

Post by aroch »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #15
aroch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely convinced this ruling is a win...making cDNA patentable is, from my view in academic research, not a good thing. I also don't understand why the Court is under the impression that cDNA is something magical that is synthesized originally by some complex thing (OK, it's complex but not groundbreaking and has been used for a long time now). cDNA is synthesized by reverse transcription of mRNA, which alr…

Well, the patent was not on the process of creating cDNA, it was on the product -- they patented the cDNA itself, not the process for creating it. It is a composition of matter patent. Therefore, the question to ask is whether the cDNA itself exists in nature, not whether the process for making it does.

But there's no reason the product cDNA should be patentable. It's that a cDNA is, quite literally, just a different storage medium from mRNA. It'd be like saying you can't patent X because it's in .doc format but if you make it a PDF we'd be happy to let you patent it.

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#17

Post by alexholehouse »

_delirium wrote: post #12
alexholehouse wrote: post #7

Yeah this is actually a pretty poor news source (hopefully it will be updated). For more comprehesive coverage info see http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/06/13/supreme-... A crucial point is the cDNA is patentable, which still makes very little sense.

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)?

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#18

Post by aroch »

_delirium wrote: post #12
alexholehouse wrote: post #7

Yeah this is actually a pretty poor news source (hopefully it will be updated). For more comprehesive coverage info see http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/06/13/supreme-... A crucial point is the cDNA is patentable, which still makes very little sense.

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.

Well, I wouldn't say that...cDNA patents are like saying "You can't copyright that public domain book in .doc format but if you make it a PDF you can". cDNA is no different than post-transcriptional mRNAs that have already been processed to remove introns (Which is part of the "unnatural" claim) in terms of the data stored; cDNA and mRNA are just two different storage mediums. Albeit they have some different biological consequences but thats nothing special as far as patents should be concerned

Re: Supreme Court rules human genes may not be patented

#19

Post by RabbitAngstrom »

fortepianissimo wrote: post #14

What about non-human genes? And if I make an exact replica of a gene, would it be considered "synthesized?"

Not a patent lawyer, but I would think that

1)the ruling focuses in on retrieval of how DNA is naturally stored, which is more or less the same in all organisms

2)you can replicate just about any gene, either chemically or via PCR. The form is definitely "snythesis," and I would assume the latter is as well but I do not know the law offhand.

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