Tag Archives: Gene patents

February 2017—The Association for Molecular Pathology belongs to a small and exclusive club of plaintiffs on the winning side of a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision. Such a ruling was issued in 2013 in the case of AMP v Myriad Genetics, a suit sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union with the AMP as lead plaintiff.

July 2013—The U.S. Supreme Court last month handed down a landmark decision on a narrow issue with broad implications for molecular medicine: Can genes be patented? In ruling that as products of nature, genes did not meet the criteria for patent eligibility, the Court brought its collective wisdom to bear on an issue that has troubled physicians, ethicists, and patients for nearly 20 years and hindered innovators in academia and industry. The Court declared invalid the patents on the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, patents that were at the heart of an intellectual property estate that enabled Myriad Genetics to create a commercial monopoly in BRCA testing.

July 2013—The most remarkable fact about the June 13 decision of the Supreme Court in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, ___ U.S. ___ (2013), is that both sides are proclaiming victory. The physicians and geneticists who challenged efforts to enforce patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are elated that the Court has squarely held that “a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.”