Physics Colloquium, March 1, 2011
Patenting Nature: How the United States Reversed Course on the Patenting of Human Genes.” Mark R. Freeman

Appellate Staff, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice

For more than two decades, the United States Patent Office has granted patents for isolated human genes. Indeed, 20% of the human genome is now claimed in United States patents. In 2010, however, a federal judge in New York declared invalid the patents on the human genes for breast cancer, reasoning that human genes are products of nature that cannot be made the subject of a patent. And to the surprise of many observers, the United States government now agrees. Mark Freeman, a Justice Department attorney and the principal author of the legal brief in which the government announced its reversal of position, will discuss the legal issues surrounding the patenting of natural products, the breast-cancer gene litigation, and the government’s reconsidered view on the patentability of human genes.