Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent
March 30th, 2010This is such good news, I almost fell out of my chair.
Via: New York Times:
A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property.
United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet issued the 152-page decision, which invalidated seven patents related to the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, whose mutations have been associated with cancer.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York joined with individual patients and medical organizations to challenge the patents last May: they argued that genes, products of nature, fall outside of the realm of things that can be patented. The patents, they argued, stifle research and innovation and limit testing options.
Myriad Genetics, the company that holds the patents with the University of Utah Research Foundation, asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that the work of isolating the DNA from the body transforms it and makes it patentable. Such patents, it said, have been granted for decades; the Supreme Court upheld patents on living organisms in 1980. In fact, many in the patent field had predicted the courts would throw out the suit.
Judge Sweet, however, ruled that the patents were “improperly granted” because they involved a “law of nature.” He said that many critics of gene patents considered the idea that isolating a gene made it patentable “a ‘lawyer’s trick’ that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result.”
The case could have far-reaching implications. About 20 percent of human genes have been patented, and multibillion-dollar industries have been built atop the intellectual property rights that the patents grant.
It’s “good news” Kev, but at the same time it’s also little more than legal “bread & circus” shadow puppet theater to keep the hopeful hoi polloi fighting the Sisyphean fight: “things will get better once we change the system”.
One dissenting judge and one legal ruling standing alone against literally billions of dollars of collective litigation from the patent holders is like a proverbial candle in the wind.
Much like “internet privacy”, it’s a convenient illusion kept alive largely for social management reasons. Without such a convenient lie it would be much harder to keep the millions of proles moving toward or already on the fringes in the game.
The concept of law is far different from the reality, where power aggregates continually, despite the existence of legal statutes purporting to protect those who fall prey to the whims of powerful entities.
The occasional Pyrrhic victory only serves to keep the illusions alive among the true believers in western society, which has been a rigged game from the outset.
I understand your shit-in-the-pool at the first hint of a pool party attitude, but I doubt that anyone here is silly enough to think that the hope and change freight train is leaving the station because of this. I’m confident that Cryptogon readers can tolerate semi-annual posts about positive developments without losing sight of the big picture. (*HA* *sigh*)