Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Patent Law Blogs -> Patent Docs

Patent Law

: Patent Docs

The Relevance of Patent Exhaustion in the Myriad Genetics Case

By Donald Zuhn, Kevin Noonan, Chris Singer, Sherri Oslick, and Jason Derry

By Kevin E. Noonan -- One of the arguments advanced by the plaintiffs in Association of Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("Myriad") is that a pernicious effect of permitting patents on genes and genetic diagnostic methods is that women cannot obtain a "second opinion" of the results of genetic tests showing mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. Whether this in fact makes any clinical difference is open to debate: while plaintiffs argue that there could be false negative results from Myriad's testing (insofar as all mutations are not assayed), there has been no specific allegation that there...

Full post as published by Patent Docs on December 15, 2010 (boomark / email).