Controversial U.S. bill would lift Supreme Court ban on patenting human genes

A congressional proposal that would overturn a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred the patenting of human genes and ease other restrictions on patenting software and biomedical inventions is drawing fierce criticism from some scientific societies and patient advocates. In particular, critics point to three recent rulings:

The new bill “makes it clear in no uncertain terms that all the Supreme Court [decisions] are just gone,” says Arti Rai, a patent law expert at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Patents that have already been struck down can’t be resurrected, she notes, and thanks to extensive research on the human genome, many claims to individual genes would no longer be considered “novel,” as U.S. patent law requires.

Source: www.sciencemag.org