The following is an excerpt.
The United States’ highest court heard arguments today in a long-running debate over the validity of patents on human genes.
US Supreme Court justices will not issue a decision until later this year — probably near the end of June — but today’s questioning suggested that they will find isolated human DNA ineligible for patents. The justices did seem inclined, however, to protect patents on cDNA, which is DNA synthesized using RNA as a template. (cDNA is often shorter and easier to manipulate in the lab than genomic DNA, and many patents on DNA sequences claim cDNAs.)
Read the full article here: US Supreme Court hears arguments in gene-patent case
