Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case examining whether a physician can infringe a patent merely by using scientific research to inform treatment decisions. Unfortunately, this essential question was largely ignored despite a number of influential organizations filing briefs warning of the dire consequences of allowing medical patents. The Court seemed to agree that medical patents were legal in general while focusing on the narrow question of whether a specific patent was overly broad. In this case, a patent holder that offers a thiopurine testing product sued Mayo Clinic for offering a competing thiopurine test, while making the extraordinary claim that a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent. The American Medical Association warned of the impact enforcing such a patent could have on medical care, yet Justice Elena Kagan claimed that "everybody agrees" the use of scientific correlations in medical practice are patentable
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case examining whether a physician can infringe a patent merely by using scientific research to inform treatment decisions. Unfortunately, this essential question was largely ignored despite a number of influential organizations filing briefs warning of the dire consequences of allowing medical patents. The Court seemed to agree that medical patents were legal in general while focusing on the narrow question of whether a specific patent was overly broad. In this case, a patent holder that offers a thiopurine testing product sued Mayo Clinic for offering a competing thiopurine test, while making the extraordinary claim that a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent. The American Medical Association warned of the impact enforcing such a patent could have on medical care, yet Justice Elena Kagan claimed that "everybody agrees" the use of scientific correlations in medical practice are patentable
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