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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Biomaven who wrote (19370)	3/20/2006 9:21:44 PM
From: A.J. Mullen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

This could be a significant case for biotech if it is broadly decided. Wonder if MYGN (for example) might get hurt by an adverse ruling? I'm hoping ( and betting) that the ruling won't be so broad as to affect MYGN. They've shown changes to specific genes cause or at least render people much more susceptible to particular cancers. That's stronger than mere correlation - although MYGN's contribution might not have been much more than establishing the correlation. Genomic Health is another company whose business depends on correlations - with treatments this time. If they're able to keep their data confidential then a competitor would have to duplicate their biological analyses. I presume public institutions would not have granted exclusive access to samples from their patients. IS that a reasonable presumption? Ashley

To: Biomaven who wrote (19370)	6/25/2006 10:49:58 PM
From: zeta1961	Respond to of 52153

Peter, Supreme Court says: "It's summer time and we ain't goin' there." This post is responding to your original one on this topic. U.S. court backs off patent case PS..I met Andy Pollack at JPMorgan..good, good person By Andrew Pollack The New York Times FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2006 The U.S. Supreme Court has backed away from ruling on a closely watched case that could have set the boundaries on what kinds of discoveries and inventions can be patented. Saying it had "improvidently" agreed to hear the case in the first place, the court on Thursday dismissed the appeal. That action effectively upheld the medical diagnostic testing patent at issue in the case. And it averted a decision that some patent lawyers said could have undermined thousands of patents on medical tests or genes. Three justices dissented, saying the court should have decided the case. They strongly suggested that they were concerned that patents in areas like biotechnology and financial services were being granted too liberally and should be rolled back. The failure to decide the case "threatens to leave the medical profession subject to the restrictions imposed by this individual patent and others of its kind," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the dissent, which was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter. Breyer said such restrictions "may raise the cost of health care while inhibiting its effective delivery." The case, LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories, involved a patent that said that deficiencies of some B vitamins could be detected by finding high levels of the amino acid homocysteine in a person's blood. The question for the Supreme Court was whether that part of the patent was merely the statement of a natural relationship between chemicals in the body. Natural phenomena, like gravity, are not patentable. Some people in the biotechnology industry contend that such patents are fundamental, that many diagnostic tests are based on finding a relationship between a body chemical or gene and a disease. Others, including groups representing doctors, contend that such patents would impede medicine. Doctors, for instance, might be guilty of infringement merely by thinking that a patient with high homocysteine levels had a vitamin deficiency. A U.S. trial jury in Denver and an appeals court both upheld the patent, which is controlled by Metabolite Laboratories, a tiny testing company based at the University of Colorado, and Competitive Technologies, a patent management company in Fairfield, Connecticut. LabCorp, a giant clinical testing company, was found to have infringed on the patent and was ordered to pay $7.8 million in damages and lawyers' fees, according to LabCorp. The Supreme Court agreed to hear LabCorp's appeal even though the U.S. solicitor general advised against it. The solicitor general contended that LabCorp had not formally made the argument about natural phenomena in the lower courts. But after hearing arguments in March and reading about 20 briefs from interested parties, the court said Thursday that it would not consider the case after all. It did not offer any further explanation. Such decisions to drop cases are made occasionally. A spokeswoman for LabCorp, formally known as Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, said the company was "very disappointed that the court decided not to hear the case based on a technicality." Competitive Technologies called the outcome "a big win."