Mayo takes patent case to U.S. Supreme Court

Article by: JIM SPENCER , Star Tribune
Updated: December 5, 2011 - 8:20 AM

Mayo will take its fight against such protection to the Supreme Court.

9
Comments

Newest first
Oldest first

1 - 9 of 9

tonyrozyckiDec. 5, 11 4:21 AM

Good point Tom Cotter, we don't want to inhibit optimal medical treatment.

barbjensDec. 5, 11 7:51 AM

Patents on drugs expires after a certain time, why not this. If we can care for people for less cost why not. We should encourage improvement not status quo.

jimmy11Dec. 5, 11 8:18 AM

I wonder how many of these type of patients does Mayo own.

sunnyreaderDec. 5, 11 9:23 AM

I hope Mayo wins on this one.

dwirkusDec. 5, 11 9:29 AM

I'm not sure if Mayo owns any PATIENTS, but likely they do have many PATENTS. (There is no "I" in "patent.") However, from what little info available in the story, I'm not sure of the basis for the suit against Mayo. It sounds as though Mayo was unhappy with the process, not just unhappy with the fee. As a result, they worked to develop their own, more reliable process. If you build a better mousetrap, I wouldn't think you could be held guilty of patent infringement simply because both traps are designed to catch mice.

gking2mnDec. 5, 11 9:52 AM

What is Mayo is doing is not pay the fee increase. See Microsoft has done this issue with Novell, Apple, IBM and Sun to try and say a concept can be owned across all platforms IBM got out of the desktop OS after the much hearld OS2 and decided not to fight MIcrosoft win. Novell tho will win against MIcrosoft and that case has been on going for over 15 years. I suspect the court will rule in Mayo's favor.

crystal313Dec. 5, 1111:26 AM

This is huge! Amazing new world we're heading into!

twspt7Dec. 5, 1111:42 AM

Good question, jimmy11. A favorable verdict from the Supreme Court could affect more than just this particular process. The Law of Unintended Consequences never sleeps!

humanistrichDec. 5, 11 1:13 PM

The patents involved are 6,355,623 and 6,680,302. While I am not a lawyer or a doctor, it looks to me that the claims are for administering a specific drug (6-thioguanine) and then monitoring the levels of that drug in the patient's blood. The claims then provide a specific lower bound that indicates the drug dosage should be increased, and a specific upper bound that indicates the drug dosage should be decreased. Since the administration of drugs and monitoring of levels in the blood would seem to be rather standard techniques, the unique claims appear to be the specific levels. This appears to me to say that no matter how someone actually does the administration or monitoring, if they are looking for the specific levels given in the patents, they would be infringing on the patents. This does not seem like a good application of patents to me.