U.S. High Court Bars Human Gene Patents

摘要

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed three decades of policy-and rattled the biotech world-when it ruled that human genes cannot be patented. The case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, pitted a Utah company that owns patents on the human breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 against doctors and researchers who argued that the patents were invalid and stifling research. The court agreed unanimously, finding that human genes are a "product of nature" and so not patentable.