Last week, the federal government said genes should not be eligible for patent protection because they are part of nature. I'm a couple of days late to his entry, but Stanford law professor Hank Greely, JD, has written a short blog post on the subject in which he asks some interesting questions. He writes:
I am not a patent person, but I do wonder what, even if accepted, the government's position would mean in the real world. I wonder what it means for organic chemicals that exist (or might exist? or probably exist?) in nature but are produced in pure form for the first time.
