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Friday, May 15, 2009
Courts - More on: "Cancer Patients Challenge the Patenting of a Gene"
Updating this ILB entry from May 13th, today Joe Mullin of IP Law & Business has a long and comprehensive report on the suit, including links to the complaint and other items. The story begins:
This week, The Prior Art takes a break from its usual surfing through federal court dockets in search of trolls and such to consider a potential landmark suit against the PTO. Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. United State Patent and Trademark Office, et al, 09-cv-04515, S.D. New York, filed 5/12/2009.For nearly 30 years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been granting patents on portions of the human genome, a practice that has resulted in thousands of human genes -- as much as 20 percent of all human genetic material -- being patented.
This week, that practice came under a full-bore legal assault when groups representing more than 100,000 doctors and researchers, working together with lawyers at the Public Patent Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit against the PTO and Myriad Genetics, a Utah-based genetic testing company. It's a lawsuit two years in the making.
The suit's immediate goal is to invalidate seven patents that give Myriad the sole rights to administer tests and do research connected to a pair of genes closely connected to breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 (pronounced "bracka-one" and "bracka-two"). Should the plaintiffs prove successful, though, their strike against the PTO would have far-reaching implications.
Dan Ravicher, the patent lawyer at the Public Patent Foundation who is working with the ACLU on the case, puts it bluntly: "The intention is to take down patents on human genes."
Myriad is a ripe target for several reasons. First, the patents it holds are on tests that diagnose breast and ovarian cancer. That got the attention of ACLU lawyers who focus on women's rights. Second, Ravicher says that -- unlike some corporate patent-holders that widely grant low-cost licenses to researchers -- Myriad has aggressively enforced its patents, making them particularly harmful.
"They have gone around and shut down researchers who are doing BRCA1 and BRCA2 research and providing clinical services," Ravicher says. "That includes universities like the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. They send cease and desist letters, and threaten to sue people."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 15, 2009 10:26 AM
Posted to Courts in general