Some Thoughts on Myriad After the Supreme Court Argument
On April 15, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. This was another significant step—probably the penultimate one—in the long-running Myriad drama. It began with a group of plaintiffs (including researchers, doctors, and breast cancer patients) joining an American Civil Liberties Union-organized lawsuit to invalidate Myriad’s patents on two breast cancer susceptibility genes (BRCA1 and 2) as well as patents on methods of interpreting genetic test results and testing anti-cancer drug efficacy. In a shocking decision, the federal district court in New York threw out all of Myriad’s patents. The Federal Circuit then reversed the district court’s rulings on the gene patents, with the three-judge panel holding unanimously that cDNA is patentable subject matter and holding 2-1 that isolated genomic DNA is patentable as well. The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling that Myriad’s methods of interpreting mutations are not patentable, but reversed it in reinstating Myriad’s claims to methods of testing drug efficacy.
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Supreme Court to Rule on Patentability of Human Genes
Robert Cook-Deegan contributed to this commentary. Dr. Cook-Deegan is a research professor in the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy and the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.
The Supreme Court today granted a writ of certiorari (meaning they agreed to hear the appeal) in Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., et al., the famous case centered on patents covering two human genes: BRCA1 and BRCA2.
Of note is that the Court limited its grant of the appeal to the first of the three questions posed by the petitioners/plaintiffs: “Are human genes patentable?”
Applying Mayo to Myriad: Latest Decision Brings No New News (Plus: Why the Final Myriad Decision Might Not Matter for Personalized Medicine)
The latest chapter in the Myriad gene patent litigation was written yesterday, with the Federal Circuit issuing its much anticipated opinion (pdf) after rehearing the case following the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision earlier this year in Prometheus v. Mayo.
Or perhaps we should say that the latest chapter was “rewritten” as, in a move that surprised approximately nobody, and as we predicted earlier this spring, the Federal Circuit reached precisely the same result in its opinion today as it did last July when it issued its first substantive ruling in the Myriad litigation. Below, we examine how the Federal Circuit applied Mayo to Myriad, what the next step in the Myriad litigation is likely to be (spoiler alert: it’s another appeal) and why we think the final opinion in this case, whenever it arrives and whatever it says, might not matter all that much.
Applying Mayo to Myriad. As mentioned, the only major change since the last time the Federal Circuit ruled in Myriad, and the reason for the re-hearing, was the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this spring in Mayo.
However, Mayo was about method patents and the boundary between a patent-eligible method and a law of nature. It was not about product patents or the product of nature doctrine. Since the Federal Circuit had already invalidated all but one of Myriad’s method patents even before the Supreme Court tightened the criteria for method patents in Mayo, it was hard to see much of substance changing the second time around.
Myriad Finally Reaches the Supreme Court (But Only For a Moment)
Yesterday, the Supreme Court (as we predicted last week that it might) GVR’d the certiorari petitions (pdf) of both parties in the Myriad Genetics case.
Big news, right? Not really.
What this means is that the Court Granted cert in Myriad, but for the limited purpose of Vacating the Federal Circuit’s July 2011 decision and Remanding the case to that court for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Prometheus.
Prometheus Patents Struck Down, 9-0: Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. Analysis
In a strong rebuke to the Federal Circuit, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held (pdf), on March 20, 2012, that Prometheus Laboratories’ claims to methods of administering drugs to treat gastrointestinal autoimmune diseases do not meet the patentable subject matter standard of section 101 of the Patent Act. The representative claim quoted by the Court recites, “A method of optimizing therapeutic efficacy for treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder” comprising two steps: (a) administering one of a class of drugs (thiopurines) and (b) determining the level of a specified metabolite, “wherein” a level below a given threshold “indicates a need to increase the amount of said drug subsequently administered” [to improve efficacy], and a level above the threshold “indicates a need to decrease the amount of said drug subsequently administered” [to avoid toxicity].
History of the Case. Mayo originally bought and used Prometheus test kits that employed the patented method, but it then decided to sell and market its own test, which was similar, but not identical. Prometheus sued for patent infringement. The district court found that Mayo’s test would infringe the Prometheus patents, but it then held the patents invalid as essentially claiming unpatentable laws of nature–in this case, the relationship between the levels of the specified metabolite and the efficacy or toxicity of the relevant drugs.
Big Changes Coming in EU Privacy Law
The European Union is about to make major changes in its privacy law that will have a significant impact on U.S. companies that do even modest amounts of business in Europe. On January 25, 2011, the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) released a long-awaited Draft Regulation on the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data (pdf).
While it will likely be a year or more before a final regulation takes effect, and there will almost certainly be amendments along the way, American companies – including those involved in the field of personalized medicine, where personal data is paramount by definition – should start paying attention now, since they may have to change the way that they do business in Europe.
Analyzing The America Invents Act
The America Invents Act (pdf) (AIA), which was signed into law by President Obama on Friday, September 16, 2011, represents the first major legislative adjustment to the U.S. patent system in decades (see previous coverage). Many changes are included in the 37 sections of this bill, and they will not all take effect at the same time. The most controversial details, found primarily in § 3 of the AIA, continue to be analyzed and debated extensively elsewhere, but there are several elements that may be of particular interest to GLR readers.
First-to-file (§ 3): The most significant change is from a “first-to-invent” system to a “first-to-file” system. Until now, it has been possible for
inventor A to challenge the application of inventor B, who filed an earlier application for the same invention, based on evidence that inventor A had actually invented first.
ACLU and Myriad Both Seek Further Federal Circuit Review
As we suspected they might, the plaintiffs in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics have filed a petition (pdf) seeking a rehearing of the recent federal Circuit decision. More surprisingly, Myriad has also, though its petition (pdf) is very narrowly focused.
The Plaintiffs’ Petition. Two things are interesting about the plaintiffs’ petition from a procedural standpoint. First, the ACLU lawyers requested rehearing by the three-judge panel that decided the case earlier this summer, not en banc rehearing by all members of the court. (But a majority of the judges of the full court could still decide to rehear the case en banc; they could do so if they found that the case “involves a question of exceptional importance.”) Second, the plaintiffs have asked for rehearing on only two of the issues they lost: that isolated genes are proper subject matter for product patents, and that only one of the named plaintiffs—Dr. Harry Ostrer, formerly of NYU—has standing to bring the case. The plaintiffs did not challenge that portion of the panel’s decision that upheld—unanimously—Myriad’s patents on a method of screening potential cancer therapeutics.
Pigs Return to Earth: Federal Circuit Reinstates Most—But Not All—of Myriad’s Patents
The Federal Circuit’s long-awaited decision (pdf) in Association for Molecular Pathology v. USPTO (the Myriad gene patent litigation) was issued this past Friday. As we were writing, with the economy having slowed to a barely perceptible crawl and a government default looming more likely by the hour, there were plenty of reasons to believe that the sky was falling. But the Myriad decision was not, and is not, one of them.
For the most part, the Federal Circuit’s 2-1 decision returned the law to the state it was in before District Judge Sweet’s opinion turned things upside-down last March. Although full of interesting rhetoric, the court’s three lengthy opinions (a total of 105 pages) are less remarkable for what they decide than for what they invite higher authorities—the Supreme Court and the Congress—to decide down the road.
First, the scorecard. The court’s judgment—that is, the holding, or outcome—was joined by Judges Lourie and Moore. A third member of the panel, Judge Bryson, dissented in part, meaning that he joined only a portion of the judgment (more on that below) and disagreed with another part.
Prometheus Returns to the Supreme Court, Medical Method Patent Speculation Intensifies
While everyone has been busy speculating about whether the Supreme Court will ultimately take the Myriad case, the justices (at least four of them—see below) sprung a surprise this week by deciding to review the Federal Circuit’s decision in another biomedical patent case, Prometheus v. Mayo.
The patents at issue in Prometheus involve a method of administering a drug (specifically thiopurine drugs used to treat gastrointestinal and other autoimmune diseases), measuring the drug’s level in a patient’s body, and then adjusting the dosage of the drug. The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall and should (see below) issue a ruling by next summer, thus drawing to a close a legal journey that began more than three years ago in a California district court.
