81–90 of 174 posts
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What if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?
Honestly, no, it should not be patentable. This is entirely equivalent to a software patent.
Darn, well there goes my plan to patent myself and require that my wife buy a license before she can bear my children.
Copyright would be more appropriate there. Children could be considered derivative works, but I don't see how they could be patent infringement.
While its not a complete win I think this is an ok compromise. Clearly Myriad is going to be impacted as other people come up with ways to test for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes without infringing on their process, and it will make screening for these genes much less expensive. But it leaves open the question of "infringement" on cDNA when you aren't party to the creation. Specifically the guys who have GMO Wheat growing…
I'm generally opposed to patents, but I think this decision is crazy. For starters, the patentability of a gene now depends on whether or not there's an intron in that gene? The isolated sequence doesn't exist as a molecule in nature, and the patent was a patent on that molecule. Should have been a straightforward "gene patents (the way they were done by myriad) are allowed". Keeping in mind, there are a ton of very…
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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 believe they just have a patent on these particular cDNA types, namely cDNA created from BRCA1 or BRCA2, and not on the well-known lab techniques for creating them.
Does this mean we'll soon see 1000s more SNPs available from 23andme? What are the biggest new SNP's they can test for?
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What if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?
No, I principally think than biosubstances should not be patentable. The fact that DNA was generated artificially doesn't make it somehow magically different from the natural one.
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Justice Scalia's concurrence, reproduced here in full: "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…
I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. I wish more public officials would show this kind of honesty, esp. those voting on new laws and regulations. I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message.
I suspect all too many of their constituents would be very happy to explain how they should vote on all sorts of matters. Getting peoples' opinions is the easy bit, working out which ones are worth listening to is the challenge.
Maybe we should just go with the most prevalent opinion on any issue. But, besides the practical issues, we can all probably think of at least one issue where we think the majority of people have got it wrong. We'd like our reasons to be considered, not just our numbers.