For the moment though, the question lingers:
do gene patents do more harm than good?
Not exact matches
Given the similarities between the Canadian
Patent Act and its U.S. counterpart for the definition of «invention», the Canadian
Patent Office has for many years granted claims like Myriad's to isolated
gene sequences and continues to
do so.
You
do not have to be a religious zealot or a scientific Luddite to oppose the
patenting of animal and human organisms and
genes.
Meanwhile, technology limits the impact of the Supreme Court ruling: The falling price of whole - genome sequencing, which sidesteps
patents altogether because it doesn't require isolating a
gene, makes it a reasonable alternative to a
patented BRCA - style test.
On the other hand, by deciding that an EST sequence
does not provide an adequate written description of a claim directed to «a
gene,» the PTO has preserved the possibility for a
gene itself to be
patented once its full - length sequence is determined.
But the predictability they
did hope for could be threatened by an evolving policy on the patentability of
gene sequences, which is emerging from the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office in Washington.
Ultimately, Greider and CSHL's intellectual property office decided not to pursue the
patent dispute — «I would rather just
do science than spend my time in court,» she says — but she prevailed in ensuring that Avilion could cite the
gene sequence in her dissertation.
When it filed for a
patent on the
gene, it didn't list the academic collaborators as co-inventors, although Greider maintains that her lab contributed biochemical protocols for purifying telomerase that were crucial to Geron's discovery.
Meanwhile, Cellectis announced it now has «an umbrella
patent» that its CEO, Andre Choulika, says «covers most of the
gene editing procedures
done with a nuclease,» including those based on CRISPR - Cas 9, TALENs, zinc fingers, and many meganucleases.
Critics also argue that the process of locating specific
genes does not warrant the awarding of
patents.
She notes that the decision doesn't threaten the many follow - on
patents the Broad has filed for
gene - editing technologies, including alternatives to the Cas9 enzyme used in the early CRISPR work.
Details of the
patent argument Geoffrey Karny, a
patent lawyer in Virginia, doesn't buy the argument that
gene patents hurt patients.
The company, Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGS) in Rockville, Maryland, found the
gene by sequencing human DNA and searching databases for possible
genes; it didn't know there was a link to AIDS when it filed a
patent application in 1995.
Gene patents, how
do you get them and why are they there?
Noonan's conclusion, however — that university researchers are at no real risk for
patent infringement liability and that
patents do not cause university researchers to abandon important areas of research — could have important implications for the
gene patent policy debate if it is both correct and extensible beyond the stem cell arena.
«The intent was to get some certainty on
gene patents, which we don't have, but the result I think can be used not just in the Long QT context,» says Sana Halwani, partner with Gilbert's LLP, who says the settlement is «groundbreaking.»
«The hope here is that we've created a moral push to
do it in the context of a public health - care system that offers testing on a not - for - profit basis and we hope companies will see the right way forward and the government will step in if more roadblocks are thrown up in the form of
gene patents on other tests,» she says.