Challenge to WARF hESC Patents Cites Recent U.S. Supreme Court Decision

Posted: July 3, 2013 at 4:10 pm

Patents on human embryonic stem cells
are being challenged in a new legal filing that cites the recent U.S.
Supreme Court decision that barred the patenting of human genes.
The stem cell case involves the
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), which holds the patents on the
much-heralded work performed by Jamie Thomson  at the University of Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed
by the Public Patent Foundation of New York City on behalf of
Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit group in Santa Monica, Ca. Jeanne
Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the
Scripps Research Institute, is also involved along with Alan
Trounson, president of the California stem cell agency. The agency
itself is not a party.
This week's filing follows the
so-called Myriad decision last month by the nation's highest court which said,

“Myriad did not create anything. To
be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that
gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of
invention.”

"WARF did not create or alter the
properties inherent in stem cells any more than Myriad created or
altered the genetic information encoded in the DNA it claimed.” 

The legal filing came in an appeal of
an earlier decision by the U.S. Patent Office. The Public Patent
Foundation, which was a successful party in the Myriad case, did the earlier legal work on the challenge to the WARF patents as well as this
week's appeal.
The appeal, prepared by Dan Ravicher,
said the WARF patents have "put a severe burden on taxpayer-funded
research in California.”
Trounson released a statement saying,

“We don't want to do anything that
gets in the way of finding treatments for some of the biggest killers
today, so we feel that all patients with all kinds of diseases
deserve to have access to these kinds of cells.”

Loring was quoted in a Consumer Watchdog press release as saying,

"Human embryonic stem cells hold
great promise for advancing human health, and no one has the ethical
right to own them.”

John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog
said,

 “The best course if WARF truly
cares about scientific advancement would be to
simply abandon these over-reaching patent claims.”

A story by Bradley Fikes in the San
Diego U-T cited intellectual property attorney Lisa Haile of DLA
Piper as saying,

“A successful use of the Myriad case
as a precedent for throwing out the foundation’s patent would open
the door to similar challenges in just about any biotech product
using material derived from life.”

WARF made no immediate comment.

Other stories on the WARF challenge
appeared in the Milwaukee Journal, Genomeweb and the LaCross Tribune. 

Source:
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