The 1980 Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty established the patentability of human modifications to bacteria, and arguably laid the foundation for the biotechnology industry.
Professor Chakrabarty remains an active researcher, and is currently pursing a promising anti-cancer therapy. Given his unique perspective on patenting in biotechnology, I asked him to provide a personal perspective on the recent Myriad ruling. His commentary on patenting human genes and mutations appears as an open access paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology.
I invite you to read Professor Chakrabarty’s commentary and sound off in the comments below.