A federal appeals court today partially reversed a lower court’s ruling in a case challenging patents on two human genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. The court ruled that companies can obtain patents on the genes but cannot patent methods to compare those gene sequences. The lawsuit, Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., charged that the challenged patents are illegal and restrict both scientific research and patients’ access to medical care, and that patents on human genes violate the First Amendment and patent law because genes are “products of nature.”
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