The Supreme Court ruled today that isolated human genes cannot be patented, a partial defeat for Myriad Genetics, a company that had been awarded patents on the so-called BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in the 1990s.Whew. I was worried.
"Myriad did not create anything," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for a unanimous court. "To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention."
The unanimous decision is even better.
