The gene patenting fight is heading back to the US Supreme Court, the Associated Press reports. According to ScienceInsider, the court added that it will only consider the issue of whether human genes are "patent-eligible."
"It will be very useful to get a definitive ruling on some of the issues at stake," Hank Greely, a Stanford University law professor tells the Nature News Blog.
As Daily Scan's sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News notes, the case was first filed in 2009 by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public Patent Foundation, the Association for Molecular Pathology, and others against Myriad Genetics concerning its patents surrounding the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The suit has since been wending its way through the legal system. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled recently, after being directed by the Supreme Court to reconsider the case, that isolated DNA is patentable.
The AP adds that the case will likely go before the Supreme Court in the spring, with its ruling to follow in the summer.