Sequenom Corp fka SQNM

[martych]

I have no desire to have a perpetual debate about the merits of the disallowal of 540. As I said before, this is a very disruptive ruling to innovation in bio land if not everywhere. If this isn't clear to you so be it. By the way, I've never thought that this patent would be upheld, only that the ramifications of it not being upheld are very significant to innovation in the US. I'll end my involvement with another reference to the appeal doc:

This is likely to lead to two negative—and ironic—results. First, it will encourage researchers to keep secret the very “basic tools of scientific and technological work” this doctrine is designed to render into a public good for the benefit of scientific progress. Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1293. Before the panel’s decision, those engaged in basic research could freely disclose their fundamental findings, secure in the
knowledge that—as Judge Bryson and the Supreme Court put it—they were in an excellent position to claim practical applications of that knowledge as the first parties to hold it. Now, the only way to protect a previously unknown and field-changing invention like the ’540 patent is to try to keep the fundamental discovery a secret as long as possible. That benefits no one, especially in fields like medicine where collaborative sharing of basic research is so fundamental to progress and the timely development of life-saving interventions.

Relatedly, this decision threatens the incentive to invest in this area at all. Researchers in the life sciences can now have no confidence of the patentability of their new methods for diagnosing and treating medical conditions; indeed, even if their patents could somehow survive the panel’s test, uncertainty will undermine investment at the outset. Moreover, trade secrets may be impossible to maintain in this area because of the regulatory approval process. Accordingly, those seeking new vaccines, new uses for existing drugs, new noninvasive tests, or other biomedical innovations will quite likely conclude that the game is no longer worth the candle. And who could blame them: They could revolutionize their field, teach their colleagues a method that is the diametric opposite of the conventional wisdom, create a practical test that confers enormous medical benefits on society, have their research cited close to a thousand times, and yet still be denied a patent because their previously unknown method relies on too fundamental a discovery they made about the natural world. Neither scientists
nor venture capitalists will see much to gain in basic biomedical\ research.