The Federal Court of Australia issued a ruling recently that is directly opposite to the ruling rendered by the United States Supreme Court relative to gene patents. In Yvonne D’Arcy v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Federal Court of Australia ruled that Myriad’s claims to isolated DNA are patentable under the laws of Australia. That is the ruling the U.S. Supreme Court should have reached in Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. As the patent eligibility laws of the U.S. become increasingly inhospitable to high-tech innovative businesses, we can expect more job losses and worse news for the U.S. economy on the horizon.
Particularly interesting is that the Federal Court of Australia went out of their way to question the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court, and say that it is exceptionally difficult to reconcile Diamond v. Chakrabarty with AMP v. Myriad Genetics. I have previously written that AMP v. Myriad Genetics overrules the fundamental holding in Chakrabarty, with many disagreeing. I feel certain that my reading is correct, and the Federal Court of Australia agreed.
The last five substantive paragraphs of the ruling of the Federal Court of Australia are compelling:
214. The isolation of the nucleic acid also leads to an economically useful result – in this case, the treatment of breast and ovarian cancers. This is surely what was contemplated by a manner of new manufacture in the Statute of Monopolies. As Moore J explained in the Federal Circuit, ‘it is not the chemical change alone, but that change combined with the different and beneficial utility which leads me to conclude that small isolated DNA fragments are patentable subject matter’.
215. The US Supreme Court rejected the claim over isolated nucleic acids for much the same reasons as those pressed by the appellant in this case. It is difficult to reconcile that Court’s endorsement of the reasoning in Chakrabarty, with its rejection of isolated nucleic acid as eligible for patentability. With respect, the Supreme Court’s emphasis on the similarity of ‘the location and order of the nucleotides’ existing within the nucleic acid in nature before Myriad found them is misplaced. It is the chemical changes in the isolated nucleic acid which are of critical importance, as this is what distinguishes the product as artificial and economically useful.
216. The fact that, hypothetically, if the isolated DNA sequence were replaced into the cell it would express the same proteins is irrelevant. Following Chakrabarty and NRDC, the isolated nucleic acid has ‘markedly different characteristics from any found in nature’; Myriad did not merely ‘separate that gene from its surrounding genetic material’. It should make no difference that in Chakrabarty there was an “addition” (of the plasmids) to the natural product (the bacterium); this is not the appropriate test. Myriad’s claim, properly considered is not, as the US Supreme Court considered, concerned ‘primarily with the information contained in the genetic sequence [rather than] with the specific chemical composition of a particular molecule’.
217. The reasoning of Lourie and Moore JJ of the Federal Circuit is persuasive. It accords with the High Court’s reasoning in NRDC and Microcell. The US Supreme Court accepted that cDNA is patentable. It rejected the isolated nucleic acid of claim 1 because it accepted wrongly, with respect, that the isolated nucleic acid is a “product of nature”. In any event, that exclusion is not in accordance with the principles of patent law in Australia and has been specifically rejected as a reason for exclusion in NRDC.
218. The isolated nucleic acid, including cDNA, has resulted in an artificially created state of affairs for economic benefit. The claimed product is properly the subject of letters patent. The claim is to an invention within the meaning of s 18(1) of the Act.
Additionally, the Federal Court of Australia also directly took on the absurd notion that isolating DNA is akin to snapping a branch off a tree. The Federal Court of Australia explained:
In the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Bryson J (dissenting) drew on a metaphor, likening an isolated nucleic acid and a branch being snapped off a tree. That is inapposite. The branch has not changed – it is simply divorced from the tree, whereas the chemical and physical makeup of the isolated nucleic acid renders it not only artificial but also different from its natural counterpart.
Will the biotechnology industry decide to relocate to where the patent laws are more favorable? That is a distinct possibility, as history has taught us.
Tags: gene patents, Myriad, Myriad case, Myriad patents, patent, patents
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