Diagnostics innovation is improving rapidly under current jurisprudence
Richard L. Blaylock, 2024 - partner with the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and have been a practicing intellectual property attorney since the mid-1990s. Statement Before the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Hearing on The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act – Restoring Clarity, Certainty, and Predictability to the U.S. Patent System, 1/24, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-01-23_-_testimony_-_blaylock.pdf //DH
The current Supreme Court jurisprudence on patent subject matter eligibility does not impede innovation in the diagnostics industry
As noted above (and discussed more below) the current state of the law has not impeded the rapid pace of innovation in the discernment and clinical application biomarkers in the form of genetic variants associated with certain disease risks and suitability for certain treatment regimens thereby advancing the progress of personalized medicine. Nor is genuine innovation in the diagnostic industry itself threatened by the current state of the patent subject matter eligibility. The exclusion of natural phenomena, natural materials, and abstract ideas from patenting in no way has stopped the patenting of innovations in the machinery and techniques for genetic sequencing or the development of new platforms for diagnostic testing. It is only the natural phenomena and natural materials, which by definition are not inventions, which are excluded. They should be viewed as pre-competitive information available to all for use in the creation of actual innovations that productively exploit such new knowledge.