A federal judge ruled yesterday (March 29) to invalidate seven patents related to two genes associated with breast cancer, casting doubt on the thousands of other patents covering human genes.

Image: Wikimedia commons

"If a decision like this were upheld, it would have a pretty significant impact on the future of medicine," Kenneth Chahine, a visiting law professor at the University of Utah, told the New York Times. Chahine filed an amicus brief on the side of Myriad Genetics, which held the patents for the genes in question, BRCA1 and BRCA2.

About 20 percent of human genes have been patented, and currently support billions of dollars worth of industry.

A study published earlier this month in Genomics argued that one of the patents should never have been granted in the first place. The 1998 patent for BRCA1 is too broad, according to the study -- containing more than 300,000 oligonucleotides, many of which were part of 80 percent of the cDNA and mRNA sequences in GenBank before the patent application was even filed.

Genes, as products of nature, should not be patentable, and the patents for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes were stifling breast cancer research, argued the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, and others challenging the patents. Patent holders Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah Research Foundation, however, claimed that the process of isolating the DNA transforms it in a way that makes it patentable.

Judge Robert W. Sweet sided with the plaintiffs, saying that the patents were "improperly granted" because they involved a "law of nature."

If this decisions stands, Chahine said, "the industry is going to have to get more creative about how to retain exclusivity and attract capital in the face of potentially weaker patent protection."


Related stories:

Gene patents -- too broad?
[17th March 2010]

Patents for cancer genes?
[10th February 2010]

Concern over BRCA2 patent
[16th May 2005]