An extremely bad medical patent is before the SCOTUS

[thewayne]

The summary from Slashdot says it so well.

"A case before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday addressed the legality of medical patents. From the article: 'The case focuses on a patent that covers the concept of adjusting the dosage of a drug, thiopurine, based on the concentration of a particular chemical (called a metabolite) in the patient's blood. The patent does not cover the drug itself—that patent expired years ago—nor does it cover any specific machine or procedure for measuring the metabolite level. Rather, it covers the idea that particular levels of the chemical "indicate a need" to raise or lower the drug dosage. The patent holder, Prometheus Labs, offers a thiopurine testing product. It sued the Mayo Clinic when the latter announced it would offer its own, competing thiopurine test. But Prometheus claims much more than its specific testing process. It claims a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent—even if the doctor doesn't act on the patent's recommendations.'"

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/08/041253/supreme-court-legitimizing-medical-patents

I think I'll patent the process that if you're hot, you might need to take some clothes off or go to a cooler location.

Comments

[silveradept]

Something like that should be laughed out of the examiner's office as obvious knowledge that can't be patented.

...what will actually happen, though, I don't know.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It doesn't make sense to me that a person's biological process can be patented, likewise I don't think genes should be patentable: they exist in nature. They exist independent of man's knowledge, and if a person finally stumbles upon the process, that doesn't mean that the process did not exist before that person's "discovery". It's like saying Columbus discovered America. He might have been (or might not have been) the first person to set foot on it (or the Caribbean), but it existed long before he set eyes anywhere near it.

I don't understand how this could have gotten to the SCOTUS, it should have been thrown out long ago.

[silveradept]

There's trainloads of money to be made if it gets patented, meaning planeloads of money will be spent to ensure that the favorable outcome is achieved, no matter how obvious the case against it is. This is the Court who rather recently affirmed the personhood of corporations and allowed their money to speak in elections.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yep, it all comes down to follow the money. And pharma has a lot of money.