An Update on the BRCA1 Story

First, the setup:

In an opinion issued in March 2010, United States District Judge Robert W. Sweet in Manhattan ruled the patents were invalid. The importance of DNA, he said, was the information content it carried in terms of how proteins should be made. In that aspect, he said, the isolated DNA was not really different from the DNA in the body. The argument that isolating the DNA made it different, he said, was just “a lawyer’s trick.”

Then:

But the appellate decision Friday rejected Judge Sweet’s reasoning, saying that since DNA is a chemical, the chemical structure is what matters and that “informational content is irrelevant to that fact.”

I think my mind just exploded. I guess I better revise my notes on DNA for next semester, since a judge just ruled that its informational content is irrelevant to its chemical nature.

via Gene Patent in Cancer Test Upheld by Appeals Panel – NYTimes.com.