PERA increases uncertainty because it’s not clear how courts will respond

Some have advocated for sweeping congressional legislation to overturn Myriad, such as Senator Tillis’s Patent Eligibility Restoration Act.339 The bill would effectively reverse Myriad and set gene patents back to pre-2013 status.340 However, gene patents were not perfect before Myriad.341 The Myriad suit was brought over very real concerns about the effects that gene patents had on healthcare costs and access by researchers.342 The bill, if enacted, would likely reopen those issues and reignite a number of debates over gene patents that would once again require judicial interpretation. Given the Supreme Court’s stance that genes should not be patentable, it is unclear whether those debates would lead to a different result. Such a move would likely provoke even greater uncertainty within the biotech industry and might ultimately prove counterproductive to the goal of reinvigorating investment in the field.