No link - other eligibility provisions prevent patents applying to genes

CHRISTOPHER COONS: Mr. Iancu, do you agree with Mr. Block's assessment of PERA? Um, do you think we need additional legislative language to keep patentability requirements separate, or is that already implied in existing law? Would it have the impact that he's predicting?

ANDREI IANCU: No, I disagree with him on that. I think it's PERA addresses the fact that the pure natural product itself, and the statute says, quote, "as such is not eligible." It's one of the exclusions. As soon as that is applied by human hand and human ingenuity to a practical application such as diagnosing in a diagnostic kit, a particular disease, that is human innovation and that should be eligible.

Whether it's patentable, then we need to decide whether it overcomes novelty and obviousness vis a vis the prior art. But it's really important to understand the fundamental concept of what human invention is. All human invention, all of it is the manipulation of nature towards practical uses by humans on this planet.

So we can exclude nature itself, but any human intervention and manipulation, that's the -- that -- that is what human innovation and engineering is, and that should be eligible for patent. It's the useful arts under the Constitution and then we can apply the fine filters of 102, 103, 112.

CHRISTOPHER COONS: Thank you. Thank you, all. Senator Tillis.

THOM TILLIS: Mr. Blaylock, I'll give you 30s to rebut Mr. Iancu's answer.

RICHARD BLAYLOCK: Thank you. The -- what would be required if you were to proceed with PERA would be to recognize that natural phenomena, natural materials, abstract ideas should be treated as prior art. One -- one should not be able to rely solely on the novelty of some fact about the natural world that one discovers as the basis for getting -- for privatizing that information and obtaining a monopoly in that regard.

THOM TILLIS: OK, Tom -- Mr. Iancu, 15 seconds to rebut.

ANDREI IANCU: Look, I mean, that is why we have the rest of the code. And any time you apply a practical practical ingenuity to nature, you're already into the useful arts. It's not necessary to hold it out at this stage. Section 103, we know how to do the analysis. We know how to take the prior art and create combinations and see if it's only a minor improvement or it's using things in the prior art that we already knew how to -- know how to do. That's already there.

Put the analysis there, you don't need to keep it out at the Section 101 level.