Saturday, June 16, 2012
U.S. Governemnt Files Brief in Myriad
The U.S. has filed a brief in Myriad, available here, which argues that under Mayo “isolated but otherwise unmodified DNA molecules are not patent-eligible because they are products of nature, not human-made inventions.” The government also argues that under Mayo the claims are patent ineligible because they effectively preclude the public from using a product of nature, and because the need for financial incentives in a particular field does not alter the requirements of § 101.
The brief I filed is available here.
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4 comments:
Looks like this patent case is heating up. Of course, its result might turn out to be anticlimactic, since statistics show that the Court hews to the position of the government (as expressed in amici briefs) a substantial majority of the time. Still, some interesting law looks likely to result from this litigation.
You have interesting points. But my analogy goes like this: I find a book I really like and see that it has not been translated into a certain language. Would I be able to translate that book into a different language than it is currently published without consequence? Wouldn't that be copyright infringement? Just because you transcribe a piece of genomic DNA into mRNA, then make cDNA, does not make it a new "product", just as translating a book into a new language doesn't make the book a new product. The analogy would be more appropriate, actually, to say that I make a reverse copy of the book so the ink is the background and the words are absent of ink to say I have created something new. Right?
I would argue that with some of the sequencing technologies on the very near horizon (possibly this year with nanopore sequencing) that it will indeed be possible to isolate a specific DNA sequence from all other cellular constituents (like separating cotton fiber from cottonseed). With nanopore sequencing you can sequence any native piece of DNA (or RNA) without any modification (PCR or otherwise).
Not a bad post
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