Federal Circuit Limits Patentability Of Genetic Sequences

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Federal Circuit Limits Patentability Of Genetic Sequences

Originally published April 13, 2009

On April 3, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal

Circuit issued In re Kubin (Fed. Cir., No. 2008-1184),

perhaps the most significant patent law decision affecting the

genetic engineering industry in over a decade. At issue is the

patentability of isolated genetic sequences, in this case encoding

a previously identified, but unsequenced, protein.

Two Amgen scientists, Marek Z. Kubin and Raymond G. Goodwin, had

invented a cDNA molecule encoding a natural killer cell activation

inducing ligand (NAIL) protein involved in an immune response to

tumors and vi...

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