The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments and examined one of the most pivotal cases in healthcare and personalized medicine: AMP v. Myriad Genetics. The case will determine if patents on human genes should be allowed, and the Court is expected to issue a decision next month. This case i... [More]

THE nine justices on America’s Supreme Court must apply their minds to the thorniest of legal questions. On April 15th they were presented with a particularly testing puzzler: should the law allow people to patent human genes?   The case is the culmination of a battle that began i... [More]

Anyone in the United States who wants to know if she has mutations in two breast cancer genes has little choice of where to be tested. One company alone has patents on the genes, and that company pretty much controls the market. On Monday, the Supreme Court will take up the issue of whether c... [More]

On April 15th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear our landmark legal challenge to Myriad Genetics’ patents on the “breast cancer genes,” BRCA 1 and 2. Corporate ownership of our genes harms women’s health and blocks progress on breast cancer. This is an historic case t... [More]

Asked in 1955 whether his polio vaccine was patented, Jonas Salk replied, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” With that, Salk debunked the misguided notion of patenting objects found in nature. His polio vaccine was not a new invention but an inactive form of the natural ... [More]

  Life science research has advanced to such a state that biological patents can now cover the sequencing, chemical composition and process of manipulating human genes. However, the rapid growth of genetic patent portfolios among for-profit biomedical organizations could pose a considerable th... [More]

Last year, Quest Diagnostics Inc  spent $740 million to buy a company that owns rights to some patents on human genes. So the prospect of a Supreme Court ruling in 2013 striking down such patents might seem scary. It isn't, said spokeswoman Wendy Bost. An end to gene patents could be a "... [More]

Today, the Supreme Court granted our petition seeking review of an appellate court’s 2-1 ruling upholding patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. We represent 20 plaintiffs, including geneticists, patients, and scientific organizations representing over... [More]

Myriad Genetics Inc illegally patented acts of nature when it claimed ownership of two genes linked to cancer, the federal government told an appeals court on Friday.Lawyers from Myriad, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appeared in the U.S. Cou... [More]

On July 20, 2012, the battle over the patenting of genetic discoveries will resume. That is when the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is set to hear another round of arguments over the validity of patents Myriad Genetics holds on isolated gene sequences in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 cancer g... [More]