Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., in which Mayo petitioned the Court to determine whether claims of Prometheus’ patent directed to optimizing dosage levels of thiopurine for the treatment of various autoimmune disorders is patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101. More specifically, the claims call for “administering” a certain amount of thiopurine to a patient and “determining” from the resulting metabolite level whether or not to increase or decrease the dosage.
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MYRIAD PART II: ISOLATED DNA CLAIMS STILL PATENT ELIGIBLE
Composition claims to “isolated” DNA molecules are patent eligible under 35 USC 101 as nonnaturally occurring compositions of matter — this, among other decisions, is what the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) published in its opinion of August 16, 2012.
OBVIOUSNESS STILL AN ISSUE FOR BIOTECH PATENTS
Gene patents (and by extension biotech patents) have received quite a bit of attention lately from the ongoing Myriad Genetics case, which challenges the appropriateness of genetic material for patents. However, patentable subject matter is only one hurdle would-be patentees must face in order to obtain a coveted patent. The invention must also be novel and not obvious over what is known in the field of art at the time of invention. This last point recently caused one patentee to lose his battle for a patent, and due to his own publication at that.