The Indian Patent Office rejected pharmaceutical company Janssen’s application for an extension of its patent on a drug used in the treatment of tuberculosis, reports Peoples Dispatch.
patents
The United States Supreme Court ruled on June 13 that human genes cannot be patented.
This surprise decision is a victory for women who need genetic testing to detect whether they carry a genetic mutation that increases the risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers.
But the ruling has much broader implications. It puts in jeopardy thousands of patents already granted on human genes over the past 30 years.
A landmark ruling in Sydney on February 15 gave the biotechnology industry an unprecedented right to make huge profits from genetic testing.
The case involved the breast cancer genes BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 and the right of US biotechnology company Myriad Genetics to have exclusive licence to a patent over their use in research.
Federal Court Justice John Nicholas had ruled that a private company can continue to hold a patent over an isolated gene, in this case, the BRCA gene. The BRCA gene is responsible for repairing or removing defective DNA cells.