Showing posts with label scotus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scotus. Show all posts

19 September 2013

How Long Before A Patent Kills A Hundred Million People?

Recent news that Angelina Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy because of her elevated risk of developing breast cancer has drawn attention to the Myriad Genetics case currently before the US Supreme Court, and to the whole area of gene patents. Myriad's monopoly has allowed it to set a high price for its tests -- $3000 -- and this is bound to have acted as a disincentive for those who were unable to afford such a sum. It is therefore quite likely that people have died as a result of Myriad's patents. 

On Techdirt.

29 June 2010

Botching Bilski

So, the long-awaited US Supreme Court ruling on Bilski vs. Kappos has appeared – and it's a mess. Where many hoped fervently for some clarity to be brought to the ill-defined rules for patenting business methods and software in the US, the court instead was timid in the extreme. It confirmed the lower court's decision that the original Bilski business method was not patentable, but did little to limit business patents in general. And that, by implication, meant that there was no major implication for software patents in the US.

On Open Enterprise blog.

23 April 2007

The Supreme Blog?

Who knew that there was a blog about the US Supreme Court? And it seems that there are some interesting things happening there in the field of patents:

the Supreme Court has taken three patent cases just this Term, the most in modern history (at least to my recollection). In an era when the Court's docket has been steadily declining, as I have highlighted in previous posts, what do you think explains the Supreme Court's sudden interest in patent cases, an area over which it has no special subject matter expertise? One obvious explanation is that the Court is trying to rein in what it might view as a rogue Federal Circuit, but I believe that there might be something more there.

(Via Against Monopoly.)