A federal appeals court ruled against Amgen in the in re Kubin case. In 2000, the US Patent and Trademarks office rejected a patent application submitted by Immunex for the gene encoding the NAIL protein, which plays a role in immune response, because isolating the gene took "routine skill." Amgen, which bought Immunex in the interim, appealed the decision. "The court's ruling is one of many signs that claims based on gene sequences are getting much tougher scrutiny now than in the past," Science Insider's Eliot Marshall says. The full decision is here.
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