Last June, I wrote about a Supreme Court decision that limited the scope of patents and tried to put some common sense into the push for "monopoly rights forever and on everything" that has taken over our "innovation" system.
Now come word that the Court will review another case that could place limits on what is patentable - in this case, medical tests (from the website: Managing Intellectual Property)
The Court granted certiorari in Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v Metabolite Laboratories Inc on October 31, despite receiving a brief from the government proposing that it reject LabCorp's petition. It is rare for the Court to hear a patent case against the solicitor general's advice.
. . .
The question that the Court will answer is: "Whether a method patent setting forth an indefinite, undescribed, and non-enabling step directing a party simply to "correlat[e]" test results can validly claim a monopoly over a basic scientific relationship used in medical treatment such that any doctor necessarily infringes the patent merely by thinking about the relationship after looking at a test result."
The case involves a diagnostic test carried out by doctors. Metabolite's patent covers tests to determine homocysteine levels in the body. But Metabolite claims that the patent also covers the scientific relationship between homocysteine and vitamin B deficiencies. Therefore, says the company, the patent claims all forms of correlating test results, such as a doctor seeing low homocysteine results and determining low vitamin B levels.
"The Supreme Court may decide that this case is their vehicle for deciding the broader issue of patentable subject matter," said Jay Thomas, professor of law at Georgetown University.
Even if the Court rules on the narrow question of medical testing, it will be a step forward. Patenting of a scientific relationship strikes me as being "overly-broad" in the extreme.
On the other hand, maybe Einstein's heirs want to retroactively patent E=MC2. Then we wouldn't have to worry about nuclear proliferation - just the enforcement of the patent infringement cases.
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