Recent controversy: The BRCA patent
Update 2/10: There has been much more commentary as the Myriad case has progressed. For starters, a Bob Carlson wrote this news piece, summarizing the court case and discussing the implications. A case study from 2008 chronicles the longer-term legal and business context. For one critique of the patents, based on their fundamental biological nature, see David Koepsell’s post on the subject.
A recent controversy involving a biomedical patent has gotten extensive coverage in the media. The New York Times reported that a cancer patient in Austin, Texas, assisted by the ACLU, is suing Myriad Genetics and the US Patent and Trademark Office for granting a monopoly on testing for an allele of BRCA-2, highly correlated with some types of cancers.
The patent on genotyping BRCA-2 is a classic intellectual property case because the discovery of the BRCA-2-cancer correlation was a biomedical breakthrough, but the diagnostic technology Myriad markets for genotyping BRCA-2 is cheap, even mundane. Myriad agrues it needs the patent to protect itself from free-riding companies who wish to offer the diagnostic technology, but didn’t have to pay for its development.
- ACLU page on the case.
- Myriad BRACAnalysis.
