โ Scribed by Deborah Levenson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
of Justice (DOJ) friend-of-the-court brief filed in the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against Myriad Genetics' patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes suggests the federal government's support of gene patents may be eroding.
The brief, filed October 29, follows a March 2010 U.S. District Court ruling by Manhattan Judge Robert Sweet that invalidated the patents and a subsequent appeal by Myriad and co-defendants, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and University of Utah Research Foundation. The PTO has stated it will continue to grant gene patents.
In the brief, DOJ argues that identifying an important DNA sequence within a genome is not enough to justify a patent. The brief likens this process to finding coal and removing it from the ground, or separating cotton fibers from cottonseeds. According to the brief, "common sense would suggest that a product of nature is not transformed into a humanmade invention merely by isolating it."
But unlike Sweet's decision, the DOJ brief maintains that DNA sequences that have been manipulated in some way should be patentable. These include cDNA constructed from RNA in a lab.
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