cdna

Further, it's support by evidence- for example, the genome is studded with p53 pseudogenes that reintegrated from cDNA nonspecifically.

Furthermore, constructing cDNA from mRNA is not novel because the process is straightforward given observation of retroviruses.

The cDNA mentioned in the judgment is not a simple XOR of the original information.

I don't understand why the Court is under the impression that cDNA is something magical and patent worthy.

You can't prove that a particular gene has been reverse transcribed and that its cDNA is therefore a naturally-occurring product, unless that cDNA is essential to the virus' life cycle.

That crosses the threshold of 'not naturally occurring' and then becomes cDNA in the context of this ruling.

However, I can't see patents of cDNA for diagnostic purposes being patentable; there the cDNA patent blocks any innovation on the interesting part, the analysis of information.

I think the argument is that if you can show that the cDNA is merely a copy of a product of nature, it can't be patented.

The decision should have been very straightforward, and against patentability of cDNA of naturally occurring genes.

The consensus in the listservs I'm on is that cDNA patentability will fall next because of these and other inconsistencies (cDNA existing in nature, being a non-natural transformation).

Using cDNA, one cannot recreate the original full DNA strand because it is like lossy compression.

If you read the opinion that this thread links, you will see that Supreme court defines 'cDNA' as 'not naturally occurring'.

As someone who has done molecular biology in an academic research laboratory, it seems as though the Court is using the term "cDNA" to represent some idea slightly different from what scientists mean by cDNA.

> To put it much more simply, there is nothing that a 6-year-old would consider “invented” about the patentable cDNA.

If intron removal is one of the key steps, and intron removal occurs naturally in the cell before the process of cell harvesting and cDNA creation begins, it is confusing (to me) to say that cDNA creation is a patent-worthy "creation".

Still, that's like saying "A zip file can't be copyrighted, but whoever manages to copy the contents once it's been decoded by a third party can copyright the contents." The judgement does not seem to understand that cDNA libraries could be constructed relatively trivially nowadays with hardly a creative thought, with apologies to those who earned their postgraduate degrees doing such a thing.