The BRCA2 gene is one member of a pair of genes that changed the patent landscape several years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that "mere" isolation was insufficient to render genomic embodiments thereof patent eligible,...more
The avocado, having gained popularity (at least in the U.S.) as a convenient (and delicious) vehicle for consuming otherwise not particularly healthful corn chips, has more recently been hailed as a "superfood" when consumed...more
Durum wheat, Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum (Desf.) Husn., used principally for pasta production, was derived from wild emmer wheat, T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides (Körn. ex Asch. & Graebn.) Thell. from domesticated emmer...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today granted U.S. Patent 10,227,611 to Jennifer Doudna, Martin Jinek, Krzysztof Chylinski, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, the patent entitled "Methods and compositions for RNA-directed...more
A rose may be a rose may be a rose (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein) but genetically roses (like many plant species) are wickedly complex. The genus Rosa comprises about 200 species, although only 8-20 species are thought to...more
Human evolution, once its occurrence was recognized over a century and a half ago, has long been a source of confusion, concern, and controversy (as well as fascination and wonder). The recent explosion in our understanding...more
One of the most powerful, visceral arguments made by the American Civil Liberties Union in Assoc. Molecular Pathol. v. Myriad Genetics, 689 F. 3d 1303 (2013), was that permitting Myriad and the University of Utah to have...more
Ulrich (Uli) Laemmli, an illustrious professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, developer of SDS (sodium dodecyl sulfate)-polyacrylamide electrophoresis (PAGE) for separating proteins, and responsible for identifying...more
The orange clownfish, Amphiprion percula, is an important denizen of many reef systems (and, thanks to Disney, Pixar, and Ellen Degeneris, one of the most famous fishes since the Billy Bass). One of thirty species of...more
The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) has been the subject of a controlled breeding experiment in Russia, at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to select for genetic determinants associated with...more
Many people of a certain age will remember their first awareness of the koala coming from a television commercial in the 1960's for an Australian airline ("I hate Qantas"). Thereafter, of course, zoos, like the San Diego Zoo...more
Hiram Bentley Glass and classical geneticists of the Twentieth Century elucidated some of the ways that genetics could inform regarding human populations and their history, using observations like genetic drift (famously,...more
A major conceit of the "genomics" revolution, involving the various species-specific genome projects epitomized by the one for Homo sapiens was the idea that decoding a genome would tell us everything there was to know about...more
The Federal Circuit affirmed the latest invalidation of genetic diagnostic claims last week, in Genetic Technologies Ltd. v. Merial L.L.C. While consistent with (and expressly relying upon) recent Federal Circuit precedent...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has made its decision regarding the motions each party will be able to bring in Interference No. 108,048 between the Broad Institute and the University of California ("University") over...more
Sequenom filed its anticipated petition for certiorari today for Supreme Court review of the Federal Circuit's decision in Ariosa v. Sequenom. The petition advises the Court that it "should take this opportunity to provide...more
The rise and spread of the Zika virus, although limited for now to South America, has raised concerns globally, particularly with the prospect of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro later this year. And with those concerns...more
CRISPR (an acronym for Clustered Regularly lnterspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which is part of a system for altering chromosomal sequences in situ in a cell in combination with a bacterially derived protein called Cas9,...more
More than three years after the June 15, 2012 deadline for providing it, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued its report on so-called "second opinion" genetic diagnostic testing, mandated by Section 27 of the...more
10/7/2015
/ America Invents Act ,
AMP v Myriad ,
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Congressional Reports ,
Diagnostic Tests ,
DNA ,
Exclusive Licenses ,
Genetic Testing ,
Health Insurance ,
Healthcare ,
Innovation ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Patents ,
Public Disclosure ,
SCOTUS ,
USPTO
Invertebrate zoology is in many ways the most comprehensive survey course on biology, encompassing most multicellular life on the planet. (Indeed, the study of the Order Coleoptera alone, comprising the beetles, would...more
Disaster survivors, and even people who just hear about a disaster, are often first overwhelmed by it; they can only rationally process its significance after some time. During that time they overcome the initial visceral...more
6/23/2015
/ DNA ,
Intellectual Property Litigation ,
Myriad-Mayo ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Section 101 ,
Sequenom
In 2009, the first edition of Dr. David Koepsell's book "Who Owns You: The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes" was published. With the second edition of his text about to be published, Dr. Koepsell allowed Patent Docs...more
One of the promises of the Human Genome Project was that knowledge of the entirety of the human genetic complement would permit researchers to identify genetic bases for diseases that had been intractable to conventional...more
One of the consequences of the explication of human genomic DNA by the Human Genome Project and related efforts has been a better understanding of anthropological history, i.e., how the human population has changed...more
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision in AMP v. Myriad Genetics in 2013, Myriad (paradoxically to those either not paying attention or who over interpreted the scope of the Court's holding in its opinion) filed...more
1/28/2015
/ AMP v Myriad ,
Covenant Not to Sue ,
Declaratory Judgments ,
DNA ,
Genetic Testing ,
Multidistrict Litigation ,
Myriad ,
Myriad v Ambry ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
SCOTUS ,
Settlement Agreements