Does this mean that someone born with synthetic DNA is guilty of infringement if they have children? Do they need to buy a licence to keep living? Perhaps as a compromise, the court can decide that they count as three fifths of a person.
<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/the-supreme-court-s-bad-science-on-gene-patents.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/the-supreme-court-s...</a><p><i>it is not the scientists who removed the introns from the officially unpatentable original DNA sequence to make the new, patentable cDNA sequence. It is nature itself, through the magic by which pre-RNA, which includes the introns, becomes messenger RNA, which does not. The Supreme Court described this process by saying, “the pre-RNA is then naturally ‘spliced’ by the physical removal of the introns” -- that is, the introns are removed as part of the ordinary process by which messenger RNA is created. The role scientists then subsequently play is to take the messenger RNA and use it to synthesize the intron-free cDNA.<p>To put it much more simply, there is nothing that a 6-year-old would consider “invented” about the patentable cDNA. It is nothing more than the messenger RNA flipped into a DNA sequence that omits unnecessary elements that nature already excluded. The sequence that codes the proteins is just as naturally occurring as the original DNA itself, which the court held couldn’t be patented because it was naturally occurring. The distinction is, to put it bluntly, a lawyer’s distinction, not a scientist’s.</i><p>(by Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard)
Unanimous judgment, though Scalia concurred in part and filed a separate opinion.<p>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 treatments that don't use the cDNA synthesis technique.
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 <i>much</i> less expensive.<p>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 in their field in Oregon, if they didn't put it there, they didn't know it had become GMO, and it was only discovered when Japan tested it, then what is their liability? And what is Monsanto's? (GMO Wheat isn't approved) I suspect these "escapes" of cDNA will become more common and the "factories" producing them, things like e.coli and algae, won't really respect the owner's rights here. :-)
An 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?<p>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.
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 facile ways of breaking such a gene patent.<p>EDIT: Actually I'm completely opposed to patents.<p>EDIT2: Here is a more detailed analysis - I didn't post it earlier since dreamhost was down. <a href="http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.indysci.org/mission/onpatenting.html</a>
While the second part is a bit disappointing. Does that mean if you manage to successfully isolate a natural version of a patented cDNA, then that patent becomes effectively invalid?<p>In practice this might not be the hardest thing to do. Do you like someone's engineered version of a gene? Then transform some randomized libraries into cell cultures (or add mutagens) and keep fishing until you extract a "natural" copy that is the same as the patented cDNA.
There's a new TV series that touches upon this - Orphan Black.<p>---- Spoilers, obviously ----<p>So they're clones, and they have a "special repeating marker" of some sorts. One of the clones is a biochemist, and she manages to decode it. Turns out, it is a copyright message covering those organisms <i>and their biological offspring</i> as property of X corporation.
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Spooky, but wouldn't the message get diluted after reproduction?
Can anyone with experience clarify this ruling? Is the SCOTUS saying that just because the specific cDNA strand doesn't exist in nature (as far as I know), then it is patentable?<p>Correct me if I misunderstood the ruling, but it seems to be absolutely ridiculous. You could just automate the process of isolating genes, sequencing them and statistically identifying their mRNA strands, isolating them, and creating cDNA strands. I know this isn't technically "nonobvious" but if you can automate the process to the point where you have robots spitting out gene patents, then it's a pretty low bar.
At one point I heard that some farmers, who were unaware that their crops contained patented genetic modifications as a result of uncontrolled natural reproduction with other GM crops, were being sued by patent holders. Does this ruling weigh in on this scenario?<p>It seems that inventions which copy themselves and masquerade in difficult/expensive to detect ways (see plant reproduction, airborne pollen) wasn't something foreseen by those who wrote our patent laws.
A co-worker in my lab pointed out that Myriad's stock is actually <i>rising</i>[1] after the decision.The best guess is that Myriad's competitive advantage is shifting to the enormous amounts of BRCA sequences they have obtained -- this would increase the cancer-vs-normal mutation prediction power considerably.<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.google.com/finance?cid=658315" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/finance?cid=658315</a>
Michael Crichton's novel "Next"[1] was a fantastic exploration of the implications of such issues being brought up here like: liability when the infringing patents are in you, in animals, in human-animal hybrids capable of human-level intelligence, and how the world deals with life when Man plays god.<p>Another excellent book on the ethics of bio-engineering and patentability is the true story, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."[2]<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel)</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1...</a>
This sets the stage for a simple way to overturn any cDNA patent. Somewhere in the body of any person infected with a retrovirus such as HIV exists a completely natural molecule of BRCA1 cDNA.
What if your life is saved from the debilitating effects of an enzyme deficiency by a virally-delivered sequence which also infects your spermatocytes (1)? And that sequence is passed to your child?<p>(1) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_immunology#The_effects_of_infections_and_immune_responses_on_the_testis" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_immunology#The_effec...</a>
> The nucleotides that code for amino acids are “exons,” and those that do not are “introns.”<p>Should read "the nucleotide <i>sequences</i>". If they can't get the definitions right, why is the rest of the opinion valid?<p>Is it time for a "Court of Science" at the district or appellate level?
Do they allow patenting a DNA sequence specified by a regular expression or a grammar? Also, what happens if the synthetic DNA is later found to exist naturally?
Kind of wondering, did Clarence Thomas actually write this, or did it fall to some young law clerk that had to take a crash course on molecular genetics?