The protection against unmodified human genes is useless – it’s impossible to use unmodified genes
Alex Moss, 24 - the executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute. She was previously at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a patent litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell. After graduating from Stanford Law School, she served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Timothy B. Dyk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Letter to Senators Durbin, Coons, Tillis, and Representatives Issa and Lofgren on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023, signed by American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Generation Patient, Public Citizen, Public Interest Patent Law Institute, and the R Street Institute. 1/30, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60e5457fb89be21d705fa914/t/65b9687cbb120871dd820938/1706649724600/Public+Interest+Letter+re+PERA+-+01.30.24.pdf //DH
PERA’s supporters contend that the bill’s provision against patenting an “unmodified human gene” as it “exists in the human body” effectively mitigates the enormous harms that would result from a return to patenting human genes. Not so. Isolated genes fall outside that narrow provision because they are modified and do not exist as such in the human body. In fact, this exclusion would have no practical effect because it is impossible to use unmodified genes “as they exist in the human body,” including for medical diagnostics and other types of testing.