And now an entry from the case files of the totally bleeding obvious: Yesterday the Supreme Court of the USA finally agreed – unanimously – that genes cannot be patented. In a stunning example of corporate over reach, a variety of companies involved in genetic research have filed patents not for the processes they use to sequence DNA, or the clever medicines they’ve invented to deal with genetic problems, but rather for the actual genes themselves. As if a corporation could own your actual genetic code (or forbid you to “use” it in some way).
Anyway, whatever they thought they were doing, the Supreme Court yesterday put them back in their box. Good news, yes. But also totally obvious.