The United States Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision today — freeing the naturally occurring BRCA genes from Myriad’s patents. Quoting from Lyle Denniston on the SCOTUS BLOG:

Pronouncing what may seem like a patent truism, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that biotech researchers have to create something to get monopoly protection to study and apply the phenomenon. Because Myriad Genetics, Inc., “did not create anything,” the Court struck down its patent on isolating human genes from the bloodstream, unchanged from their natural form. Because Myriad did create a synthetic form of the genes, however, that could be eligible for a patent, the Court concluded.

The decision was a major blow to a company that believed it had a right to be the sole user and analyst of two human genes that show a high risk, for women found to have them in their blood, of breast and ovarian cancer. But the ruling will give medical and scientific researchers, and family doctors, greater opportunity to help women patients discover their potential vulnerability to those types of cancer.

Long before Myriad thought about trying to patent the gene, genius geneticist Dr. Mary Claire King discovered after years and years of research what many women around the world knew: something deadly was being passed down in their families. The amazing story of one of those women, Annie Parker of Toronto Canada, and the work of Dr. Mary Claire King, are brilliantly, warmly, compassionately, and even sometimes humorously told in the movie Decoding Annie Parker by Steven Bernstein. In a tribute to all women who fight this battle every day, the filmmakers granted BRCA Gene Awareness, Inc., this non-profit, the opportunity to show the film around the world until mid-October to raise awareness and money to save women and their families from the scourge of breast cancer.