In the recent Myriad case, which was decided on August 16, 2012, The majority opinion held that traditionally the patent system has been sympathetic to “investing communities” and the question of whether genes should be a patentable or Not patentable subject matter is a policy question and up to Congress (NOT the courts) to answer.
Judge Bryson, the dissenting in part Judge, responded that the court received amicus brief from the justice department asking the court not to grant patents on isolated DNA, i. e. the government is asking the court to resolve this issue. According to him:
“Broad claims to genetic material present a significant obstacle to the next generation of innovation in genetic medicine—multiplex tests and whole-genome sequencing. New technologies are being developed to sequence many genes or even an entire human genome rapidly, but firms developing those technologies are encountering a thicket of patents.”
Disclosure of sequences in patent documents is a requirement under the current patent law system, however, a few patent offices make the information computer searchable and available to the public freely of charge. The Biological patenting team of the Lens project built a platform to render that information more accessible to and usable by diverse innovators. Check our new product, PatSeq Explorer that allows users to navigate patent sequences that mapped onto the human genome or as a matter of fact many other genomes in the coming future.
