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.